THE FATHER

Director: Written and directed by Florian Zeller, based on Zeller’s play.

2012, 97, PG-13

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell.

 

Cinestudio presents another of the Academy Award-films nominated for Best Picture, for the majority of people who haven’t – until now – been able to see it in a real cinema! It also picked up nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress for Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman, who play a man with dementia struggling to make sense of the world, and his frustrated, overwhelmed but loving daughter. What stands out in The Father is the choice of Florian Zeller (French playwright turned director) to see the story through the father’s eyes: a women he doesn’t recognize claims to be his daughter, he wakes up in a flat where he’s never been before, and wonders why his other daughter (Imogen Poots) is refusing to visit. In refusing to see Hopkins’s character as a hopeless victim, The Father asks questions of memories, consciousness and compassion that affect everyone.

“What might have been predictable becomes startling…as well as beguiling, unsparing, terribly moving and occasionally very funny. Mr. Hopkins is the master of it all.” Joe Morgenstern, Wall St Journal.