The mercurial realities presented in The Father recall those of Ron Howard's biopic on mathematician John Nash, A Beautiful Mind (2001), but its twists never settle into a place of understanding. He navigates his way through a perpetual liminal state as best he can, but his addled condition only worsens, and he descends into paranoia, doubt, and fear. Anthony turns around and the furniture is no longer where it was just seconds before.

Familiar artifacts - his watch, the artworks in his apartment - are like lifelines that provide him with grounding at times, but they're always on the brink of being untethered from their moors: lost, misplaced, or unfamiliar. His slipping grasp extends to domestic objects, not just people, and they take on a heightened sense of meaning, like objects in a dream. It's a nuanced and sensitive performance.ĭirector Florian Zeller must have done formidable research in order to present Anthony's condition with such fidelity. She plays Anne as a woman whose emotions are kept in check but always appear to be bubbling just below the surface, ready at any moment to boil over. His performance is riveting, and no doubt Hopkins will make the shortlist for Best Actor come Oscar time, as will Colman for Best Actress. Hopkins is given a range of emotions that tests his mastery of the craft, and he proves here why he's remained a cinematic tour de force. His character's fragile emotional core is as tenuous as his memories, which must be the case for those suffering from Alzheimer's and its accompanying dementia. This is really the story of two people, and they no longer recognize each other.Īnthony goes from tender and sympathetic to irate and back again without missing a beat. Colman is outstanding as a woman coping as best she can with a parental figure who's sometimes her loving and compassionate dear old dad but who can turn on a dime, making her the target of his invective. Anthony at least experiences bouts of elation, or even normalcy, however fleeting such moments prove to be. He just doesn't remember.Īnne is trapped in a perpetual state of despair. In a similar manner, characters we recognize, and some we've never seen before, come and go. Is this woman, now played by another actress (Olivia Williams, who looks like she could be Colman's sister) really his daughter? 'Where's Anne?' he shouts, deftly switching from cheerful good spirits to vexed indignation in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, the woman before him is no longer his daughter.

There are none - only a worsening state as his memories vanish from one moment to the next.Īnthony welcomes Anne back home at one point, delighted to see her. It's bewildering and confounding and offers no easy resolutions to its protagonist's dilemma. The Father is a powerful, emotionally gripping piece of cinema.

And the audience is given an up-close account of what that devastating condition can do to one's familial relationships and one's sense of self. An elderly gentleman who lives with his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), Anthony suffers from dementia. 26-Wracked by confusion, despair, and distrust, family patriarch Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is a man untethered to time.

Shadows of doubt and fear