In Florian Zeller’s film The Father, Anthony Hopkins plays an octogenarian father suffering from a neurodegenerative disease that makes him wander through the twists and turns of memory. Overwhelming and brilliant!
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« JI don’t know where to rest my head ”, confides the one who seems to have lost it. Adapted from his own play, The father, written in 2012, this film by Florian Zeller brings together two exceptional actors: Anthony Hopkins alias Anthony, an octogenarian father, and Olivia Colman, Anne, his daughter. Between them, a link mortgaged by a neurodegenerative disease which could be Alzheimer’s; around them, a ballet of actors. They embody a limited gallery of characters, primarily Anne’s husband and a caregiver. The confusion of roles, regularly changing performers, as well as the gradual transformations of the decor, make the London apartment where everything happens a palace of memory and a labyrinth. Because the landmarks are blurred, shaken by a broken narration and a willingly inconsistent editing. The viewer ends up as bewildered as the main character. He experiences in his place the defeat of meaning to which the inexorable disease leads. Anthony Hopkins, masterful, embodies a being of an incredible presence although absent, caught in an interior storm which sweeps away everything, anger as sadness, love as regret. All that remains is the dismay of a Shakespearean character, a heart-rending old Lear lost on the moor. With Alzheimer’s, “It is not only the body which is affected, it is not only the mind which is disturbed, it is the whole being which is affected, in a lively state”, writes the philosopher Michel Malherbe in Alzheimer (Vrin, 2015). “Illness is henceforth the hegemonic principle of the life of the individual and it controls all its dispositions. ” Leaving himself in this essay room for the accounts of his “Visits” with his sick wife, this specialist in Hume finally wonders “How to recognize a human being” when the bond with others and the world is so affected by “Degeneration” ? What remains of the person when all the philosophical theories finally seem inconsistent in defining him? Stay there “Incomplete recognition”of a humanity difficult to define, which nevertheless forms the basis of this moving film.
The Father / By Florian Zeller / With notably Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman / In theaters April 7 / Duration: 1h37
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