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A watch. A painting. A chicken dinner. A snippet of conversation.

These and other everyday pieces of a life take on greater significance and heartbreaking meaning throughout the course of “The Father.” They’re at once mundane and unreliable, tactile and elusive within the ever-shifting mind of Anthony Hopkins ’ character, an 80-year-old Londoner succumbing to dementia.

Writer/director Florian Zeller , adapting his prize-winning, 2012 French play of the same name with the help of the legendary Christopher Hampton (“ Dangerous Liaisons ,” “ Atonement ”), has pulled off a dazzling feat here. He puts us within the mind of the ailing Hopkins’ Anthony, allowing us to experience his confusion as if it were our own. But he also offers the perspective of the caretakers and loved ones who try to settle his volatile temper and organize his jumbled memories. We never know what’s true—or who, for that matter, as characters come and go and take on various names and identities, depending on his recognition of them. Everything is fleeting and yet each specific moment feels urgent and real.

Struggling to navigate this muddied mélange of past and present is a brilliant Hopkins, giving a performance that’s both charismatic and ferocious, sometimes within the same breath. There’s mind-blowing specificity to his technique here as he’s called upon to convey a wide range of feelings and emotions, but also a softness and openness we’ve rarely seen from him. It’s some of the absolute best work of Hopkins’ lengthy and storied career.

And as his daughter, Anne, Olivia Colman is consistently his equal. She, too, must ride this roller coaster and struggle to put on a British, stiff upper lip within a situation that’s steadily crumbling. She’ll manage a smile as tears well in her eyes or flinch ever so slightly yet maintain her patience when her father says something rude and insulting. As our guide—as much as Zeller will allow us one—Colman is tremendous as always.

But mainly we see the world through Anthony’s eyes, and at first, that seems like a pretty peaceful place to be. When we spy him initially, he’s listening to opera on a pleasant afternoon in his spacious, tastefully appointed London flat. But soon, Anne stops by to visit and informs him she’s met someone and is moving to Paris to be with him. His demeanor changes instantly and, feeling wounded, he lashes out: “You?” he asks incredulously. “You mean, a man?” Later, as the long-term reality of this news hits him, he reveals a deeper layer of hurt: “So if I understand correctly, you’re leaving me, is that it? You’re abandoning me.” His face falls a bit but he still tries to exert a measure of control and bravado.

Some version of this sort of conversation happens again and again—over where he placed his beloved watch, for example, or the cruel treatment he inflicted upon his previous at-home caregiver. And just when we think we’re getting into the rhythm of “The Father,” it changes the tempo and the players. Maybe this isn’t Anthony’s flat—maybe it’s Anne’s and she’s taken him in to stay with her. Maybe she has a husband after all, named Paul ( Rufus Sewell ), with whom she still lives. And maybe now she’s being played by Olivia Williams in a clever bit of casting, given their similar features. The arrival of Imogen Poots as a potential candidate to look after Anthony provides some sunshine, as it gives him the opportunity to flirt with a pretty young woman. He’s randy and charming as he declares playfully, “Time for an aperitif!” But she also reminds him of his other daughter, who was an artist, and whatever happened to that painting of hers that was hanging above the mantle … ? Anthony’s first meeting with Poots’ Laura is a great example of what a shock it can be when Zeller pulls the rug out from underneath us—never in gimmicky fashion, but rather as a reflection of the jarring changes occurring within the character’s mind and mood. We feel them, too.

But while some moments of memory loss cause a jolt in the story and give Hopkins room to express his character’s frustration grandly, what’s happening throughout with the production design and editing is so subtle, it’ll make you want to rewind a few seconds just to appreciate the slight changes. Whether it’s different tiles on the kitchen backsplash, a rearranged bedroom or a white grocery bag instead of a blue one holding the chicken to roast that night, production designer Peter Francis vividly creates various versions of this same, enclosed setting. And what editor Yorgos Lamprinos does here is so complicated and yet so understated, it’s like a magic trick right before our eyes. Lamprinos, our Los Angeles Film Critics Association winner for best editing, had the daunting task of crafting a story that’s simultaneously confusing and compelling, and he rose elegantly to that challenge. And the score from Ludovico Einaudi , whose music also appeared recently in Chloé Zhao ’s gorgeous “ Nomadland ,” mirrors the performances in the way it tugs at our hearts without being mawkish.

The fluid nature of the narrative calls to mind Charlie Kaufman ’s achingly melancholy drama “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” from last fall. While Kaufman’s story was deeply steeped in his trademark surrealism, what’s so sad about both films is the way they portray the notions of home and family—which should be safe harbors—as ephemeral. The people and imagery we rely on to define us may look familiar, but there’s something slightly off, and that’s deeply unsettling. I suspect it will be especially so for viewers who’ve experienced such a decline with members of their own family. But perhaps it will provide some solace, as well.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Father (2021)

Rated PG-13 for some strong language, and thematic material.

Anthony Hopkins as Anthony

Olivia Colman as Anne

Mark Gatiss as The Man

Olivia Williams as The Woman

Imogen Poots as Laura

Rufus Sewell as Paul

Ayesha Dharker as Dr Sarai

Florian Zeller

Writer (play)

Christopher Hampton

Cinematographer

Ben Smithard
Yorgos Lamprinos
Ludovico Einaudi

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Review: ‘The Father’ showcases Anthony Hopkins at his devastating best

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In “The Father’s” house are many rooms, all of them beautifully appointed with details so sharp and precise that you might be startled to find them vanishing a few moments later: Didn’t those backsplash tiles look different a minute ago? Wasn’t there a lamp on that side table? The French writer-director Florian Zeller, adapting his internationally acclaimed play for the screen, has a meticulous eye and a keen sense of mischief, which doesn’t lighten so much as heighten the implacable tragedy at the heart of this story. The moment-to-moment pleasures of trying to decipher the plot give way to crushing futility; you’re left sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that’s almost too painful to solve.

Those pieces have been plucked from the life of an 80-year-old Englishman named Anthony. Known as André in the play, he has been renamed here in honor of his interpreter, Anthony Hopkins, who repays it with a performance of extraordinary psychological cunning and emotional force. We first encounter Anthony in a darkened London apartment, listening to a recording of Henry Purcell and John Dryden’s 1691 dramatic opera “King Arthur, or the British Worthy.” Before long his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), comes in and the music stops, though not before the opening lines of an aria have rung out: “What power art thou, who from below / Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow / From beds of everlasting snow?”

The opera reference is a studied choice but an apt one: Soon enough, a deep, menacing chill descends on this movie like a fog and stays there, wrapping around the mind of a man trying to shake off his slumber. Less an unreliable narrator than an unreliable observer, Anthony is in a rapidly advancing state of dementia, a condition that manifests itself in fugue states, memory lapses and volatile fits of temper. His fierce tantrums have recently burned through a series of in-home nurses, leaving Anne at her wits’ end. This much of the situation is clear enough, mainly because it keeps getting reiterated for Anthony’s benefit — patiently by Anne, who tries to coax him into behaving , and more resentfully by her husband, Paul (Rufus Sewell), who occasionally turns up to protest the disruption of their once stable, comfortable lives.

Anthony, for his part, has a rather different understanding of who’s intruding on whom. His daughter sometimes becomes a stranger. He is visited and attended to by others he doesn’t recognize, played with gently obliging smiles by actors including Imogen Poots, Mark Gatiss and Olivia Williams. (In addition to the doubled Anthonys, the casting of two equally superb Olivias slyly compounds the confusion.) He mutters and rants about unwanted caretakers and stolen possessions, namely the watch that keeps vanishing from his wrist — an effective if on-the-nose nod to his slippery sense of time. He reacts to each new piece of information with skepticism and fascination as if he were an investigator making a surprising discovery rather than a man losing his grip on reality.

“The Father,” in other words, is both a detective story and a study in confinement, a mystery set within the labyrinthine recesses of a deteriorating mind. The original play (whose English translator, Christopher Hampton, is credited alongside Zeller for the screenplay) availed itself of the natural abstractions of theatrical space, turning the stage into a psychological hall of mirrors. But Zeller, making an elegant and incisive feature debut, finds an ideal equivalent within the more realistic parameters of the movie screen. The airlessness that stifles so many stage-to-screen adaptations only serves to reinforce this film’s mood of entrapment, barely diminished by the opera selections and the recurring strains of Ludovico Einaudi‘s original score. The imposing physicality of the apartment makes it that much more startling when the movie begins to undermine its own premises.

I mean premises quite literally. The flat features a long hallway that seems to stretch toward infinity, with doors that lead into interconnected, sometimes interchangeable-looking rooms. Ben Smithard’s deep-focus widescreen compositions with restrained lighting and slightly muted colors confound your sense of direction, even as they invite you to rummage through the details of Peter Francis’ intricate production design. And as those details — the tiles and that painting, the pottery and the furniture — begin to shift imperceptibly from scene to scene, our understanding of time, space and reality begins to rupture in concert with Anthony’s. (Among recent movies, “The Father” would make quite a haunted-house triple bill with “Relic” and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” which also dramatize cognitive decay via compulsively mutating decor.)

How closely do Zeller’s formal conceits approximate the real, lived experience of dementia? The answer to that question is fundamentally unknowable and possibly irrelevant; as we’ve seen from “Away From Her,” “Still Alice” and other fine dramas about the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on a family, this kind of radically subjective storytelling isn’t a prerequisite for empathy or emotional truth. Even still, the rigorous interiority of “The Father” compels your attention: If narrative cinema is largely predicated on the illusion of seamlessness, there’s something apt about the way Zeller both upholds and shatters that illusion, bridging the narrative gap across a series of jarring discontinuities. You can imagine the mind doing something similar, struggling for lucidity in the wake of mounting incoherence.

But you don’t need to imagine it, because for the entirety of the movie’s fleet 97-minute running time, Hopkins embodies it. His Anthony can be vulnerable and fierce, broken and defiant: His moments of verbal acuity and self-aware humor exist on a continuum with his equally sudden lapses into oblivion. In one scene, he disarms a visitor with flirtatious charm and even does an impromptu dance only to turn the tables with stinging viciousness: It’s not clear if this is the real Anthony, in full, ferocious possession of his faculties, or an unrecognizably distorted version of him or some strange conflation of both. We see both the singular, towering personality he once was and the fumbling fragility to which he will soon be reduced.

If it feels redundant to invoke Shakespeare with regard to this particular actor, it also seems like more than happenstance that Hopkins, having recently played King Lear in a 2018 TV adaptation, has now stepped into a role with obvious Learian overtones. This is, as its title suggests, the story of not just a disintegrating psyche, but also a disintegrating relationship between a father and a daughter whose love he can no longer see or feel. “The Father” may be a remarkable feat of sustained identification, but beyond the margins of Anthony’s experience — and primarily in the figure of Anne, whom Colman brings to aching, tremulous life — we catch glimpses of other characters and other stories: a terrible accident, a broken marriage, a second chance at love.

These stories may be half-buried memories or hallucinatory projections, but they are real enough to mark “The Father” as more than just one man’s tragedy. The film’s final embrace is a quietly astounding vision of grace in solitude, and it harks back to that opening aria, with its invocation of eternal winter and the unheard rejoinder that follows: “ ’Tis Love, ’tis Love, ’tis Love that has warm’d us.”

‘The Father’ Rating: PG-13, for some strong language, and thematic material Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 26 at Vineland Drive-In, City of Industry; available March 26 on PVOD platforms

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The Father Reviews

The Father is a film that punches you straight in the gut. You’ll never be able to forget this one.

Full Review | Apr 23, 2024

Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning act leaves you with a heavy heart.

Full Review | Jan 10, 2024

The great Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony, an eighty-something-year-old man who’s constantly at war with his own cognition.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Through our protagonist’s mental condition, we witness how human consciousness turns against us. That an ill mind can make a cruel and grotesque joke about our very existence, setting up a punch line that will tear down the world we thought we lived in.

The Father is an overwhelmingly devastating depiction of the painfully progressive disease that is dementia. Anthony Hopkins delivers an award-worthy, powerfully compelling performance. One of the best movies I've seen in the last couple of years.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Jul 24, 2023

The Father has, like his [protagonist's] mind, an elliptical structure, made of holes and voids. Allowing us to get lost and confounded in its thrilleresque atmosphere... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | May 3, 2023

An act of empathic genius.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2022

“The Father” is a tough watch. But the bold choices, the emotional honesty, the crisp detailed storytelling, and the tour de force performance from Anthony Hopkins (among other things) make every second worthwhile.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

The script ensnares us into the life of this man, though the audiovisual elements could've been more inspired. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 11, 2022

The Father deserves recognition and appreciation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 3, 2022

It is not just a film that you watch, it is a film that you experience - mind, body, and soul.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | May 13, 2022

Capped by one of the most harrowing speeches youll see all year, The Father belongs in that special category of films that are brilliant but may require a bit of a break before you see them again

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 2, 2022

It's an incredibly accomplished, well-structured chamber drama, aided in its translation to English by playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Not only is the film absolutely affecting, but the sheer confidence that it carries would be impressive for any film much less a directorial debut.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2022

The film does what Christopher Nolan keeps trying and failing at, which is to ever so gingerly reach into our minds and tweak out the corners and meaty pieces of our perceptions, before we even notice what's being done

Full Review | Jan 14, 2022

Extraordinary. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2021

Director Florian Zeller makes light work of this adaption of his play, using the camera to recreate the claustrophobia and uncertainty of relying on an uncertain mind.

Full Review | Nov 6, 2021

Anthony Hopkins is one of the best actors alive right now, undoubtedly. The Father was one of the best surprises of 2020, with an incredible visual concept that blows my mind when I think this is Zeller's first film. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 22, 2021

[Much] of the strength of the film lies in Anthony Hopkins' lead performance alongside Olivia Colman, Zeller's direction is nothing to sniff at.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 8, 2021

It's a film that's worth more for its conception and execution than its ideological discourse or social agenda. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

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Movie Reviews

Movie review: 'the father'.

Bob Mondello

An elderly pensioner, played by Anthony Hopkins, refuses all assistance, to the distress of his daughter, played by Olivia Colman, in the dementia drama The Father.

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‘The Father’ Review: Anthony Hopkins Gives a Tour-de-Force Performance

Anthony Hopkins delivers a tour-de-force performance in Florian Zeller's drama of dementia, which puts us in the mind of a man who's losing his.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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'The Father' Review: Anthony Hopkins Gives a Tour-de-Force Performance

There have been some good dramas about people sliding into dementia, like “Away From Her” and “Still Alice,” but I confess I almost always have a problem with them. As the person at the center of the movie begins to recede from her adult children, from the larger world, and from herself, he or she also recedes — at least, this is my experience — from the audience. I have never been sure how to get around that, but in “ The Father ,” the French playwright and novelist Florian Zeller, making his auspicious debut as a feature-film director (the movie is based on his 2014 play), has found a way.

At the beginning, Anne ( Olivia Colman ), in London, returns to her large, stately, and tastefully cozy book-lined flat, with its sky-blue walls, and greets her father, Anthony ( Anthony Hopkins ), who is 80 years old and needs looking after. His memory has been slipping, though he hasn’t lost his feisty combative spirit — qualities we’ve come to expect from Anthony Hopkins, though in this film they’re merely the first couple of onion layers of a brilliant, mercurial, and moving performance. Anthony, in what we’re led to believe is typical behavior for him, has subjected his most recent caregiver to so much cantankerous abuse that she quit. Anne could hire another one, but it’s not that simple. As she finally tells him, she’s moving to Paris to be with the man she loves. What’s right on her lips — but she can’t bring herself to say it — is that it’s probably time for Anthony to go into a nursing home.

Strolling into the living room, he encounters a man sitting there calmly, reading The Guardian. It’s his daughter’s husband (Mark Gatiss); they all live together in the house. Moments later, the daughter returns, but it’s a different woman from before (now played by Olivia Williams), who announces that she’s bought a chicken to cook for dinner. Anthony, stunned by this shift in reality, tries to adjust and makes a reference to the husband — and she looks at him with a blank stare. There is no husband. (She was divorced five years ago.) There’s no chicken, either.

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Which scenario is real, and which one has Anthony hallucinated? We can’t quite tell, but in each case what we’re seeing feels real, and that’s the film’s ingenious gambit. In “The Father,” Zeller plants us inside a convincing homespun reality only to reveal that it was a mirage; before our eyes, the solidity turns to quicksand. Or was the reality before it the mirage? The film gives us small sharp clues to get our bearings, and each time we do it pulls the rug out again, seducing us into thinking that this time we’re on firm ground.

“The Father” does something that few movies about mental deterioration in old age have brought off in quite this way, or this fully. It places us in the mind of someone losing his mind — and it does so by revealing that mind to be a place of seemingly rational and coherent experience. At times, the film seems to be putting King Lear in the Twilight Zone; at others, it’s like “The Shining” with Harold Pinter soap opera in place of demons. “The Father” is a chamber piece, but it has the artistic verve to keep twisting the reality it shows us without becoming a stunt. And that’s because there’s a raging-against-the-dying-of-the-light saddened desperation to it. Anthony isn’t just “fantasizing.” He’s seeing true-blue pieces of his life dance with primal enactments of his fears. His mind is like a vivid but faulty TV remote — it’s clinging to life even as it clicks to the next everyday dream.

Anne returns, introducing a new caregiver, Laura (Imogen Poots), who is so youthful and vibrant that she lifts Anthony’s spirit, to the point that he flirts and pours some whiskeys. She reminds him of Anne’s sister, Lucy, who’s an artist (several of her paintings hang on the walls). But there’s a hush in the air every time Lucy’s name is mentioned. Also on hand is Anne’s husband — I mean her real husband, Paul, played by Rufus Sewell with such cuttingly plausible resentment that we know in our guts he’s truly there. He’s the one pushing, harder than anyone, for Anthony to go into a home.

Watching “The Father,” we’re drawn right into the I-see-ghosts-can’t-you-see-them-too? experience of dementia. But we also put together the puzzle of Anthony’s life, and what gets to us is that we’re gathering the pieces even as he’s losing them, one by one. He keeps scrambling up the identities of the people close to him, which allows Zeller to play neat tricks with his actors. And Anthony both knows it and doesn’t know it. Because like any of us he believes what he sees. All the actors in “The Father” are vivid (Colman brings her role a loving vulnerability that warms you), but Hopkins is flat-out stunning. He acts, for a while, with grizzled charm and roaring certainty, but the quality that holds his performance together, and begins to take it over, is a cosmic confusion laced with terror. Anthony is losing more than his memory — he’s losing himself. The triumph of Hopkins’ acting is that even as he does, you’re right there with him.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 27, 2020. Running time: 97 MIN.

Production: (U.K.-France) A Sony Pictures Classics release of a Trademark Films, Cine@, Embankment Films, Film4, Viewfinder production. Producers: Simon Friend, Christophe Spadone, Philippe Carcassonne, Jean-Louis Livi, David Parfitt. Executive producers: Lauren Dark, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Hugo Grumbar, Tim Haslam, Paul Grindey, Zygi Kamasa.
Crew: Director: Florian Zeller. Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller. Camera: Ben Smithard. Editor: Yorgos Lamprinos. Music: Ludovico Einaudi.
With: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots , Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams.

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‘the father’: film review | sundance 2020.

Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman play a dementia-afflicted man and his daughter in 'The Father,' Florian Zeller's screen adaptation of his own play.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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The best film about the wages of aging since Amour eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insightful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia and the toll it takes on those in close proximity to the afflicted. Fronted by a stupendous performance from Anthony Hopkins as a proud Englishman in denial of his condition, this penetrating work marks an outstanding directorial debut by the play’s French author Florian Zeller and looks to be a significant title for Sony Classics domestically later in the year.

First performed in France in 2012, the play has elicited hosannas wherever it has appeared, notably in Paris, where it won the 2014 Moliere Award for best play, in the U.K. from 2014 to 2016, and in New York, where Frank Langella won a Tony Award for his lead performance in 2016. Christopher Hampton did the English adaptation and receives co-screenwriting credit here.

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The father review: florian zeller's directorial debut is an effective drama.

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Florian Zeller makes his directorial debut with The Father , which he adapts to the screen with Christopher Hampton and is based on Zeller’s own play. With an utterly captivating and heartbreaking performance from Anthony Hopkins anchoring the film, this drama about a traumatized man with dementia is breathtaking and emotional. Zeller compartmentalizes and explores the titular character’s pain, caught in the midst of his deteriorating memory while grasping onto anything he can remember. The Father dives deep into the mind, delivering an engaging film that is unsettling, achingly sad, and is strengthened by Zeller’s assured narrative.

The film is primarily told from the perspective of Anthony (Hopkins), who becomes disoriented, angry, and frustrated when he recalls specific memories that don’t seem to line up with what he’s being told. The audience sees his interactions with several people — his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman), his caretaker Laura (Imogen Poots), a mysterious man he can't identify at first (Rufus Sewell) — but it becomes increasingly clear that Anthony is experiencing several moments in time at once. It makes it hard to keep track of what’s real, what’s present, and who’s who, with Anthony often speaking to someone he believes is Anne and her husband, though they’re played in these scenes by different actors. Facts from his and his daughter's life blurs for Anthony and he’s never sure whether Anne is divorced, married, moving to Paris to be with someone, or what they’re having for dinner. In the midst of his growing confusion are moments of clarity, tinged with feelings of intense sadness and a possessiveness that underscores a lack of control as Anthony’s mind slips further.

Related: The Most Anticipated Movies of 2021

Zeller delivers a confident directorial debut, deftly navigating the cognitive space to engage with Anthony's befuddlement while referencing a couple of story points that make clear what is and isn't happening (though it needs a rewatch to study the thrilling ways in which Zeller sets up and explores the story). The Father has all the trappings of a play adapted to film — the use of a limited setting, with the characters moving in and out of house rooms and, later, inside a nursing home facility. However, it never feels constrained by them. Rather, Zeller employs the space to heighten the disconcertment and confusion. A seemingly spacious apartment is no longer welcoming, but alarmingly claustrophobic the more Anthony realizes something just isn't right.

Moments of Anthony looking out the window, as though waiting for someone or wanting to escape the confines of his deteriorating cognition, are nicely paired with scenes that convey the exact opposite. As an example, Anthony is incredibly possessive of his home and watch, fearing the loss of both and quickly turning accusatory whenever the reasoning goes against what he believes. While the audience is swept away into the maze of Anthony’s mind, the more grounded moments in The Father stem from Colman’s Anne, who is patient, loving, and fraying at the edges, caught between maintaining her strength and crying as she watches her father deteriorate. Colman, as always, is exceptional. While the film isn’t focused on her as much as Anthony, her emotions are equally on display.

What The Father does astoundingly well is portray Anthony as a fully realized character. The film isn't interested in a story that emotionally manipulates its audience and forces them to merely sympathize with this man. Zeller accomplishes what Viggo Mortensen could not in Falling , another film about a man with dementia and his son trying to help him. Here, Zeller provides a character study while engaging with a story that feels as fractured as Anthony's mind, all without excusing the man's behavior or, in some cases, trying to understand it beyond the scope of the story. Anthony is charming and fun, but also deeply cruel and malicious, spitting hurtful words at Anne while comparing her to her sister, angrily yelling at Laura and mocking her upbeat intonation. Hopkins' portrayal is brilliant, seamlessly moving from one emotion to another, conveying devastating loss, befuddlement, and the distinctive terror that accompanies his slipping hold on his mind and memories. To watch him as he begins to understand what's going on is riveting and gut-wrenching all at once.

The Father is deep and meaningful, with Zeller more than willing to dive into Anthony’s psyche, as well as explore his relationships without it ever feeling like the audience is being spoon fed information or forced to sympathize just for the sake of it. The film expertly weaves together a fantastic character exploration of a man whose mind is no longer in his control, all while it builds towards the reveal of a mysterious, traumatic time. Zeller is a confident filmmaker and, if The Father is any indication, viewers should keep an eye out for his work in the future.

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The Father is in theaters March 12 and is available on premium video on demand beginning March 26. The film is 97 minutes long and rated PG-13 for some strong language and thematic material.

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Anthony Hopkins' dementia drama The Father is a quiet revelation: Review

T he Father is hardly the first prestige drama to address dementia — in fact, it's actually the third in this past month alone, after Supernova and the Viggo Mortenson-helmed Falling — but it manages to do something films like this rarely do: portray the real-time ravages of the disease from the inside out.

That writer-director Florian Zeller, working from his own acclaimed 2012 French-language play Le Pére , is able to turn devastating illness into a kind of disjointed poetry — and one still threaded with real emotional resonance — is a testament to his skill as a first-time filmmaker. But also to the beautifully shaded performances he elicits from his stars, including Anthony Hopkins as Anthony, a retired engineer falling deeper into the twilit recesses of his mind, and Olivia Colman as his long-suffered daughter and caretaker.

A proudly dapper gentleman of a certain age, Anthony mostly potters around the confines of his spacious London flat (or is it really his?), and seems to take a combative pleasure in provoking Colman's beleaguered Anne, whether he's needling her about her love life or roundly dismissing her attempts to bring in professional minders to look after him. They're all petty thieves, he insists, and entirely unnecessary anyway.

But the faces of these various home aids (played primarily by Imogen Poots and Olivia Williams) seem to shift in ways that increasingly don't make sense to him; so too do the men (Rufus Sewell and Mark Gatiss) Anne is supposedly married to. And where is his other grown daughter, the one that Poots' pretty, laughing Laura reminds him of?

The less Anthony is sure of, the more imperious he tends to be — puffed with outraged dignity one moment and coolly dismissive the next. He bluffs and bristles, wheedles and charms; at one point, he even does a jaunty little soft-shoe. Still, the threads of his life are loosening, and Hopkins' eyes, still a keen Siberian-husky blue, register more and more that things are not where and how they should be.

Though nearly of all this takes place inside apartment walls, Zeller somehow staves off claustrophobia; there's a warm, painterly quality to the light that pours in, and a graceful pacing to the script (translated and adapted by Atonement screenwriter Christopher Hampton) that allows its growing resonance to creep in, quietly.

The skillfulness of the telling, paradoxically, can make The Father feel at times almost too painful to sit through; as the story shifts elliptically in and out of time, Anthony's losses become our own. By its end though, the movie has become a profoundly moving meditation not just on perception and reality, but also on the limits of familial care — and all the ways that illness can make the people we love the most unrecognizable, even to themselves. Grade: B+

( The Father is in select theaters Friday and comes to VOD March 26.)

The Father Is a Devastating Close-up of a Mind That’s Beginning to Fray

Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) has come unstuck in time. He can never seem to find his watch, and he suspects that someone has taken it — maybe one of the women hired to be his caregivers or the man he encounters in the living room who claims to be married to his daughter. Inevitably, it turns out to be in the bathroom, where he has always hidden his valuables, a habit that’s not nearly as secret as he seems to think it is. Anthony’s desire to enforce order on the day is countered by the way that the hours keep slipping by him; he’ll still be in his pajamas when he finds himself being asked to sit down to dinner. His daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), will tell him things, like that she’s met someone and that she’s going to Paris to be with him. But when he brings the move up later, she has no idea what he’s talking about. More frighteningly, sometimes she looks like another person entirely (and is played by another, Olivia Williams) who still calls him “Dad” and wants to know why he’s looking at her that way. All he can do is mutter about how there’s something funny going on, a comment that does little to capture the scope of his disorientation.

The Father is the directorial debut of French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller, which he adapted from his own play with the help of Christopher Hampton. It’s an intimately scaled drama that manages to be terrifying, unfolding as it does primarily from the unmoored perspective of someone in serious cognitive decline. What’s so nightmarish about Anthony’s situation is that he retains just enough of himself to understand that something is terribly wrong. He runs up against the walls of his own constrained existence, feeling loss and panic and rarely able to pin down why. When the film opens, he’s living alone in the London apartment he bought three decades before, a spacious, handsomely appointed place with fawn-colored walls. He has already chased off the latest caregiver hired by Anne to look after him, insisting that he’s fine, and for a moment, he seems that way. Then he loses track of the conversation. By the next scene, it starts to seem as though maybe this apartment isn’t his; maybe he has moved in with Anne and doesn’t remember.

The Father is assembled like a puzzle box, its chronology curling in on itself in cunning ways. Certain details — a chicken dinner, a divorce, the arrival of a new home aide named Laura (Imogen Poots), a conversation about nursing homes, Paris — keep returning, making it unclear if we’re in the past or present. The constant is heartbreak: As the film moves along, it starts dipping more and more into Anne’s point of view, and it becomes evident that she’s being swallowed whole by her efforts to care for her aging parent. Her father knows that she has a husband, sometimes, while at other times he’s surprised to find a man he doesn’t recognize in the house — one who’s played by Rufus Sewell in certain scenes and Mark Gatiss in others. Anne’s husband is a lot less patient with Anthony than Anne is. It’s possible we already know what happens to this marriage. It’s possible we’re told the ending of the movie in the very first scene, though it doesn’t matter to Anthony, who exists in the moment in the most anxiety-inducing way possible.

Some plays feel airless and constrained when brought to the screen, but the claustrophobia of The Father — which rarely leaves the apartments and, eventually, health-care facilities in which it’s primarily set — works in its favor. These high-ceilinged spaces serve as the backdrop for two astounding and admirably unsentimental performances. Whatever the relationship between Anne and Anthony was like before his dementia, his condition has only made the cracks in their connection more apparent.

As Anne, Colman offers up shattered smiles and extends endless patience while entertaining a dark fantasy of smothering Anthony in his sleep. As Anthony, Hopkins leans into the character’s capacity for cruelty as well as his vulnerability, working himself into a crescendo of outrage or cutting Anne to the quick with accusations of theft or by insisting that her sister — whose absence he laments with the blitheness of someone who has forgotten what happened — was always his favorite. Hopkins, who shows no signs of slowing down at 83, has always been capable of exuding authority and distinction, but as Anthony, he deftly toggles between bluster and vulnerability. Anthony may not have been an especially warm figure in his prime, but Hopkins makes it painfully clear that dementia is stripping him of any dignity. Masterful and agonizing, The Father is a gorgeously crafted film about a doomed arrangement entered into with love, even though it can only end in tragedy.

*This article appears in the March 1, 2021, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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clock This article was published more than 3 years ago

‘The Father’ is a meticulously constructed story in which very little is what it seems

In the intricate, exquisitely crafted movie “The Father,” Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony, an elderly gentleman living in a well-appointed flat in London, where he’s been living with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) until she informs him that she’s moving to Paris to be with a man she’s recently met.

Such is the inciting incident in what promises to be a wrenching but touching story of filial loyalty, agonizing separation and self-discovery. But very little is what it seems in this meticulously constructed jewel box of a film, which reveals ever more complicating and contradictory facets as the reality of Anthony’s experience becomes progressively clearer.

Or murkier. Directed by Florian Zeller, here adapting his own play with the help of screenwriter Christopher Hampton, “The Father” is ostensibly about a man grappling with the onset of dementia, when simple recall and daily logic can become quandaries of existential depth. Is the woman he calls Anne really Anne? Or is it another character entirely, played by Olivia Williams? Is Paul (Rufus Sewell) Anne’s husband or an interloping malefactor? Anthony turns on the headlights for Laura (Imogen Poots), a sweet-natured caretaker Anne wants to hire before she departs for France. His twinkling, avuncular flirtation will ring true to anyone who has witnessed firsthand how convincing cognitively challenged people can be, when reflexive charm and muscle memory take over from the confusion that threatens to sink the whole ship.

Hopkins slips seamlessly into his role as the vulnerable, imperious, terrified and cantankerous Anthony; he’s lovable and exasperating in perfectly equal measure as he swims against the invisible tide of aging and mental decline. “The Father” provides sensitive, superbly compassionate insight into many things, including the fragility of dignity, the ghost prints left by grief and love, and the abiding mysteries of consciousness itself. Aided by a masterful production design by Peter Francis, Zeller plunges viewers into Anthony’s mind as it shifts and seizes, trying to make sense of a present that insists on blurring into the past. Not since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” has a filmmaker so thoroughly put the audience inside the experience of a protagonist, to such shattering emotional effect.

Anthony Hopkins is welcoming old age by embracing his inner child

As grim as the subject is, viewers might expect “The Father” to be a downer. But it’s such a powerful theatrical experience, and such a handsome chamber piece for the combined talents of its accomplished cast, that it’s improbably bracing. Its ingenious hall-of-mirrors construction transforms what could be a dull, maudlin wallow into a lively, improbably inviting battle of wits — between Anthony and the people who love and torment him, and between Zeller and the audience. “The Father,” ultimately, is a paradox: as nuanced as it is bluntly direct, as tough as it is tender. In its own elegant, confounding, chimerical and compassionate way, it’s a lot like life.

PG-13. At area theaters; available March 26 on premium video on demand. Contains some strong language and mature thematic material. 97 minutes.

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DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

An elderly man sits in a chair and talks to his middle-aged daughter.

In Theaters

February 26, 2021
Anthony Hopkins as Anthony; Olivia Colman as Anne; Mark Gatiss as The Man; Olivia Williams as The Woman; Imogen Poots as Laura; Rufus Sewell as Paul

Home Release Date

May 4, 2021
Florian Zeller

Distributor

Sony Pictures

Movie Review

The mind, like the body, is a creation of dizzying intricacy. Just as we don’t think about how the heart beats or the lungs breathe, neither do we question what our brain tells us is true.

But sometimes, something in the brain breaks. Clogs. Slows. Skips.

If the body goes wrong—the heart, the lungs, the legs, the teeth—we know it. We feel it. We do something about it, because our mind tells us we must. But when the mind goes wrong, it doesn’t look, to us, as if it’s broken. It looks as if the world has.

Anthony knows his world. He knows who he is, what he loves and how he spent his life. His walls are filled with books and records and pictures of the past, evidence of a life well lived. He has two grown daughters—one he barely sees and loves, the other whom he sees all the time and … well, she’s just all right.

Perhaps he’d appreciate Anne more if she wasn’t always around. But she is. It’s as if she’s moved in to his flat, and at an age when she should really be out on her own. She has a husband named Paul, too—or, at least she does part of the time. And then there are the strangers that Anne insists on bringing in: nurses or helpmates or whatever they’re called. As if Anthony needed help. As if he was old and feeble and not perfectly capable of living his life as he always has.

No, these “helpmates” are of little help to Anthony. They’re terrible, in fact—babying him incessantly and, often, stealing things when they believe he’s not looking. He’s been forced to hide his most prized possessions in a cabinet or under the tub.

But the worst of it? The strangers that come in—those who say they’re Anthony’s caregivers. Those who say they’re Paul. Those, even, who come in and pretend to be Anne herself. What sort of trick are they trying to pull? Anthony knows what his own daughter looks like. Why, he can point to her picture right on that—

But where’s the picture? And who painted the wall?

Positive Elements

The Father is a beautifully brutal portrait of dementia and the toll it takes not just on the one suffering from it, but on the aging man’s primary caregiver: his daughter.

Many of us know, too well, how much Alzheimer’s and dementia can take from loved ones. And many know the quiet heroism that comes with caring for someone suffering from the condition.

And, indeed, Anne is quietly heroic here. We see her suffer a great deal from her father’s slights and suspicions. When Anthony tells visitors that Anne is dull and tedious, she forces a smile and tries not to cry. When Anthony has lost one of his prized possessions, Anne does her best to calm her dad and find it for him. She’s always on call and ready to rush to her father’s side if something goes wrong, sacrificing her own freedom and happiness to do so. Sometimes she even sings him to sleep, as a mother would a baby.

But while Anthony can sometimes act monstrous, it’s not his fault. And just as we can see his cruelty, so sometimes we see flashes of kindness and gratitude.

As his mind deteriorates, he loses the capacity to even put on a sweater. When Anne gently helps him put it on, Anthony looks into her eyes in a moment of comprehension and clarity.

“Anne,” he says. “Thanks—for everything.”

Spiritual Elements

Sexual content.

Anthony seems initially smitten with his newest caregiver (a woman named Laura). “I say, you’re gorgeous,” Anthony tells her when he first meets her, and he holds her hand. He then proceeds to dance enthusiastically for Laura’s pleasure, telling her that he used to be a tap dancer. (It is, of course, not true.)

Anne is married, though that marriage ends in divorce somewhere along the way. We learn that she’s met someone else who lives in Paris, and she plans to move there to be with him.

Violent Content

In a scene in which Anne walks in on her sleeping father, she strokes his face gently and lovingly before moving her hands around his neck and squeezing, strangling him. It’s merely a brutal fantasy, though, one the film perhaps implies is shared by other equally weary and worn caregivers.

Paul, fed up with Anthony, slaps the confused, old man in the face several times.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Anthony talks frequently about his other daughter, Lucy, and how much he misses her. He wonders why she doesn’t visit more, but the truth is brutally simple: Lucy died in an accident years before. We see a brief flashback of her in the hospital, badly bruised and in a neck brace.

Crude or Profane Language

Two f-words, one s-word and a handful of uses of both “b–ch” and “t-ts.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Characters drink wine and whiskey. Anthony swallows a glass of the latter in one gulp while extolling the virtues of his other, “favorite” daughter. Paul consumes a great deal of wine during one dinner, which may contribute to an unfortunate confrontation.

We hear quite a bit of talk about Anthony’s medications, and several people encourage him to take those pills.

Other Negative Elements

“I must say, he’s charming,” caregiver Laura tells Anne when she first meets Anthony.

“Yeah, not always,” Anne says with a forced smile.

We see Anthony behave quite cruelly on occasion, especially toward Anne. “She’s not very bright,” he’ll tell someone as Anne looks on. “Not very intelligent. She gets that from her mother.” He accuses Anne of plotting against him and waiting for him to die so she can have his apartment. “I’m going to outlive you,” he bellows, telling caregiver Laura just how “heartless and manipulative” Anne is.

Anne is devastated and embarrassed by Anthony’s outburst, but Laura takes it in stride. “That sort of reaction is quite normal,” she says. But that doesn’t mean Anthony’s abuse is easy for even professionals to stomach. We learn that he’s chased off several—accusing them of stealing from him and being generally mean. And when Laura gently encourages him to take his medication (which she notes is a pretty shade of blue), he snaps at her, telling her not to talk to him as if he’s “retarded.”

As frustrating as this can be for those close to Anthony, it’s not really his fault. Dementia causes mood swings and lowers inhibitions and removes simple social decorum that most of us simply take for granted. And who wouldn’t get irate to see “strangers” traipse in and out of your home, apparently swiping things as they go?

Anthony’s condition causes him to lie on occasion, too; he claims at various points that he was both a dancer and a circus clown when he was younger.

We can lose our possessions, but no one can take away our memories.

So we tell ourselves as we spend time with loved ones and our money on family vacations, squirreling away precious, eternal moments at every turn.

But the cliché, we know, isn’t always true. Our memories can be taken from us. Our intelligence can, too. Our wit. Our very personality. Everything that makes us us can be torn slowly away, like pages in an old book, until all that’s left is the cover. A husk of who we were.

To me, this feels like one of life’s greatest and cruelest challenges, one that can even shake faith. God , we might pray, take from me my wealth, my health, my home … but leave me myself. Let, with my last breath, look into the eyes of those whom I love, and let them know that I love them, too. But for some, God does not grant this prayer. God is good, but His ways can be mysterious and hard.

The Father , of course, is a very sad movie, one that mercilessly marches through the realities of fading by inches. For those who are intimately acquainted with the subtle horrors of Alzheimer’s and dementia, the film might be especially hard.

But it might be welcome, too, for the film comes with its own bleak beauty It carries with it, perhaps, the tang of grief—all the sorrow and sadness and anguish and pain that great loss brings, but moments of strange sunlight in the darkness: Because in the midst of grief, love remains. Love goes on.

I am not myself, Anthony tells us in gesture and deed. But as the movie wears on, an important but comes about. I am not myself, it says, but I am worthy of love still. I care still—and need care. I am not myself, but I am still a beautiful thing—a beloved creation.

The Father features two incredible performances by previous Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman. And while it has some bursts of foul language and moments of shocking cruelty, the story is at its core a tender one, albeit sad and painful.

“I feel like I’m losing all my leaves,” Anthony confesses, “the branches in the wind in the rain.”

Even then—in his confusion and pain and helplessness, some truths still remain: The sun sometimes shines. Walks in the garden can still be pleasant. And he’s still cared for. He’s still loved. In his raging, growing darkness, there is still light.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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‘The Father’ Review: Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman Inside the Brutal Matrix of Dementia

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in select theaters on Friday, February 26, 2021.

At once both an unsettlingly accurate simulation of what it’s like to love someone with dementia, and also a strikingly believable conception of what it’s like to live as someone with dementia, Florian Zeller ’s “ The Father ” envisions senility as a house of mirrors in which everyone loses sight of themselves. Adapted from Zeller’s award-winning play of the same name, and directed with a firm hand by the playwright himself, this M.C. Escher drawing of a movie chips away at the austerity of the Euro-dramas that inform its style until every shot betrays the promise of its objectivity, and reality itself becomes destabilized.

“The Father” is a slippery film in which even the most basic information can be vaporized in the span of a single cut, but there’s no ambiguity to the fact that Anthony Hopkins plays the title role (although it might be worth noting that the character’s name has been changed from Andre to Anthony, a self-reflexive detail that adds a crunchy meta core to one of the movie’s most harrowing moments). Anthony is not well, but even that much isn’t clear at first. For better or worse he still has the vim and vigor of a much younger man, but his mind is a leaky ship in search of a lighthouse surrounded by jagged rocks.

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We’re first introduced to Anthony as he sits in his posh London flat and listens to classical music with an impish grin of recognition plastered across his face: the Platonic ideal of a wealthy retired Brit. Alas, the water is troubled when his daughter Anne (a bubbly and tender Olivia Colman ) drops by with some bad news: She’s moving to Paris to live with her boyfriend, and she’ll have to place Anthony in a home if he continues to scare off the live-in aides who look after him. “I don’t need anyone!” the old man barks, a little flash of Lear cracking through his manic demeanor, either refusing or unable to admit that he’s lost track of himself.

Later — though when exactly is hard to say in an temporally cyclical film that unfolds like a cross between “Amour” and the video game “P.T.” — Anthony finds a man (Mark Gatiss) sitting in his study and reading a newspaper like he owns the place. And maybe he does. The man insists that he’s Anne’s husband, that Anthony is a temporary guest in their flat, and that his wife hasn’t thought to mention that she’s running off to Paris with another man; the sadistically giddy delight that Anthony takes in sharing that “information” is both a rare spot of humor, and an ominous sign of someone who’s been stripped of everything but his cruelty.

But the joke is on us. While Zeller’s austere compositions have already conditioned the audience to accept the cold truth of each shot — and invited us to look at Anthony through the privileged lens of our natural pity — the facts of the matter are soon rejiggered like the squares of a Rubik’s Cube. Another woman (the great Olivia Williams) comes home claiming to be Anne, and she’s carrying the roast chicken we could’ve sworn was in the oven already. Perhaps she’s Anne’s sister Catherine, who was always Anthony’s favorite. Why doesn’t she call anymore? Dinner’s almost ready but the sun is still rather bright. Anne says it’s 8pm, but that would seem like a stretch even at the height of summer, and I swear Colman was wearing a cat. A coat . What time is it anyway? Anthony is always checking his wristwatch — tell-tale evidence of the compulsive behavior that anyone familiar with dementia will recognize all too well — but he always seems to have left it in his secret hiding place. Wasn’t he just wearing it? And if Mark Gatiss is playing Anne’s husband, who is Rufus Sewell supposed to be?

On paper, this might sound like the kind of routine gaslighting that psychological thrillers have traded in for decades, but on screen the effect is entrancingly different. By completely eschewing the notion of a subjective camera in a film where objective truth doesn’t exist, Zeller obliterates the binary between confusion and understanding; instead of alternating between each character’s truth in a way that always aligns the camera to one clear perspective, “The Father” levels the entire film into a single reality that’s simultaneously both infallible and untrustworthy. We always know what’s happening, and — with the exception of a few moments that don’t involve Anthony — we never know what’s happening.

The more that viewers get the lay of the land, the more distancing Zeller’s approach becomes. The more we think our way through his Penrose staircase of a timeline, the more the movie loops back around to embarrass our false sense of context. As Anthony grows more irascible, and Hopkins’ tour de force of a performance takes on withering new dimensions (there are discernible shades of all his signature characters in this, as if the actor’s core identity were being dissolved into the various roles he’s inhabited over the years), “The Father” becomes less emotionally involving. That’s not a criticism, nor — this critic suspects — an accident. There’s a reason why Zeller ignores even the most fundamental aspects of Anthony’s former life, and leans on co-writer Christopher Hampton to articulate the gap between the “real” and the “imagined” as beautifully as he did in “Atonement.” We’re not getting further away from the story so much as we’re growing closer to our remove from it, and “The Father” is more interested in that disorienting push-and-pull than it is in a more typical kind of drama.

In a way, it would be dishonest for a portrait of dementia to make you feel too much; the process of watching someone forget themselves seldom allows time for sadness, anger, or any other easily discernible emotion, in much the same way that running a marathon seldom leaves you with the energy to focus on anything more than completing the next mile. On the contrary — and from either side of senility’s two-way mirror — it’s a constant struggle to reassert a shared reality. To recognize someone for who they are while trying not to forget yourself in the process. The brunt of the crying only comes later, after memories of someone are all you have left.

Moments of success don’t result in happiness so much as short-lived relief, and they often curdle into evidence of a deeper failure without any warning. That awful whiplash is on full display in the film’s best scene, an introductory meeting between the father and his bright new aide (a brilliant Imogen Poots , negotiating an entire Pinter play worth of resolve, doubt, and betrayal in just a few short minutes). Anthony is at once both more aware than we think, and less aware than he knows. That tension erupts into a rare burst of melodrama — though Hopkins keeps the ham in check — but it leaves the entire flat unsettled in a way that makes it hard to know what it is you should be feeling. Resignation might be the only option, even if it requires you to shirk your responsibilities as a viewer or a child.

Over the course of 97 increasingly grim minutes, Zeller’s puzzle-box drama distills the abstract concept of senility into an ontological experience that denies your sympathy at almost every turn. While brought to life by a handful of brilliant performances and some very impressive sleight-of-hand, this isn’t a film that tugs at your heartstrings, introduces you to memorable characters, or even makes it possible to keep track of their names. It’s not a film that’s easy to recommend, or perhaps even possible to love. “The Father” exists for no discernible reason other than to render an inexplicably cruel element of the human condition in a recognizable way, and to do so in a way that only good art can.

“The Father” premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in theaters last this year.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the safety precautions provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.

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The Father Review

Back in 2000, a filmmaker named Christopher Nolan made his American debut with Memento , an emotionally brutal thriller about a man named Leonard who is unable to retain a memory for more than five minutes. What was startling about it was the way in which Nolan locks the viewer inside Leonard’s mind, so that you too greedily grab on to any morsel of information offered and eye other characters with suspicion. Now, 21 years later, another new director, this time a French playwright named Florian Zeller, is using a similar technique to equally striking effect. The hero of The Father is an octogenarian and has neither peroxide-blond hair nor visible tattoos, but he too is floundering desperately, unable to trust his own mind. And by adopting the perspective of a man with advanced dementia, Zeller has created a highly effective piece of POV filmmaking, a kind of horror film with a huge heart.

Anthony ( Anthony Hopkins ) is lost in a labyrinth. It’s a mental one: the various threads of his life keep slipping through his fingers. Where’s his watch? Is his daughter married? Is she moving to France? What’s happened to his other daughter? Is it morning or evening? Where’s that bloody watch? But as depicted here, it’s also a physical maze: as he negotiates the London flat in which he’s ensconced, the furniture keeps shifting, paintings vanishing from the walls, a piano morphing into a drinks cabinet. Zeller, adapting his own stage play, proves a natural at subverting filmic language to head-spinning effect. It’s unclear at all times exactly where Anthony is, or when he is.

It’s a tough watch, for sure, not least in the astonishing, tear-jerking final five minutes. But it’s also gripping and audacious.

Who he is is kept fuzzy, too. Conversations Anthony has with people lurch forward, frequently reversing when something he says is met with bafflement — “Of course,” he mutters repeatedly when corrected, though it’s heartbreakingly obvious that beneath his feigned comprehension is still abject confusion. Like Leonard in Memento , Anthony is hunting for clues to his own identity. And as portrayed by Hopkins in a powerhouse performance, one of the actor’s very best, he cycles through a vast range of emotion in 97 minutes, none of it feeling false. At one point the character is impishly charming, offering a whisky to his new carer and launching into a frenzied tap-dance. At another, his mood blackens, becoming horribly cruel. But mostly, he is lost, unmoored, searching desperately for a measure of control.

It’s a tough watch, for sure, not least in the astonishing, tear-jerking final five minutes. But it’s also gripping and audacious, twisting the conventions of narrative storytelling to match the awful effects of the disease it’s portraying. It offers no easy answers — there aren’t any. But it does offer plenty of compassion, both for the titular character and for his daughter, occasionally lingering with her, as played with low-key power by Olivia Colman , just long enough to make clear how much she’s struggling too. “I don’t need help from anyone,” Anthony barks at one point. But The Father makes clear that in this situation, all we can do is hang on to each other for dear life.

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Alzheimer's drama has strong language and adult themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The reality of suffering with Alzheimer's is portr

Anthony is shown to be smart, charming, and funny,

A character is slapped in the face a number of tim

Character remarks on another being "gorgeous."

Occasional language includes "f--k," "s--t," and "

Characters drink alcohol on a number of occasions

Positive Messages

The reality of suffering with Alzheimer's is portrayed with sensitivity and empathy, without patronizing or expressing pity. The movie encourages patience and understanding when dealing with someone with an illness such as Alzheimer's.

Positive Role Models

Anthony is shown to be smart, charming, and funny, but his illness often leads to fear, confusion, and anger. His confused emotions are made relatable by framing the scenes from his perspective. His daughter, Anne, is shown to be patient, loving, and supportive, though struggling with the pressure of caregiving.

Violence & Scariness

A character is slapped in the face a number of times, and another is strangled in a daydream sequence.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional language includes "f--k," "s--t," and "bitch," as well as "t-ts" and "retarded."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink alcohol on a number of occasions but are never seen drunk. There is mention of prescribed medication and pills.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Father is an excellent -- but at times upsetting -- drama about a man suffering with Alzheimer's. Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman star as father and daughter, Anthony and Anne, with Anthony being diagnosed with the disease. Scenes are shown from his perspective and are purposefully disjointed and confusing to reflect his mental state. There are heartbreaking moments that are difficult to watch, including Anthony being slapped in the face, and him breaking down in a care home. Occasional strong language includes "f--k" and "s--t." Characters do drink alcohol but only in moderation. The movie is a clever and sensitive exploration into a cruel disease, but may be upsetting and confusing for younger viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Kids say (5)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Love and Dementia

Think about it., what's the story.

In THE FATHER, Anthony ( Anthony Hopkins ) is introduced as a smart, charming older man living in a London flat, which his daughter Anne ( Olivia Colman ) visits regularly. But that version of reality is gradually challenged as it is revealed Anthony is suffering from Alzheimer's and his account of events is not always reliable. As the past, present, and elements of fantasy collide, Anthony struggles to make sense of his changing reality, which seems more and more at odds with his experience.

Is It Any Good?

Oscar-winner Hopkins gives one of the finest performances of his career as a man slowly losing his grip on reality and experiencing the full cycle of emotions that come with that. In some scenes in The Father , he's the vivid, charming, cultured man of a not-so-distant past. But in others, he's angry and defiant, then in a moment scared and childlike in his need to be soothed. Fellow Academy Award-winner Colman beautifully portrays the pain and frustration of managing the situation, in which help is constantly refused and her motives often questioned. She herself fluctuates between pandering, correcting, and losing control of her own anger.

The genius of the film really lies in its structure and casting. In his debut feature as director, Florian Zeller adapts his own stage play for the screen, making clever choices that leave the audience as disorientated as Anthony's character. One of those is having different actors play the same role, so that when Anthony doesn't recognize his daughter, the audience experiences the same dissociation. Even within the flat where Anthony lives, furniture subtly changes, timeframes shift, and apparent strangers appear as if from nowhere -- some of the most heartbreaking moments coming when he refuses to react for fear he can't possibly explain. It's an incredibly difficult watch at times, but Hopkins' performance makes the film such an intimate and compelling experience that it's hard to look away.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Alzheimer's disease is portrayed in The Father . What are some of the techniques used to show how Anthony is experiencing events? How does the movie shed light on Alzheimer's? How does Anthony's diagnosis impact him and his family?

What do you think is the appeal of sad movies like this one? Why do we like to watch movies about tragedy and hardship? What can we take away from these emotional experiences?

Discuss the relationship between Anthony and Anne. Did it seem a loving one? How did Anne show empathy and compassion toward her father?

Talk about the language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

Movie Details

In theaters : February 26, 2021
On DVD or streaming : March 25, 2021
Cast : Anthony Hopkins , Olivia Colman , Rufus Sewell
Director : Florian Zeller
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
Genre : Drama
Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy
Run time : 97 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : some strong language, and thematic material
Awards : Academy Award , BAFTA
Last updated : July 14, 2023

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The Father review – Anthony Hopkins superb in unbearably heartbreaking film

Hopkins gives a moving, Oscar-winning turn as a man with dementia in a film full of intelligent performances, disorienting time slips and powerful theatrical effects

“L et me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!” says King Lear, a plea which is overwhelmingly sad because it can never be heard by anyone with the power to grant it. Anthony Hopkins, who played Lear in Richard Eyre’s production for the BBC , now delivers another performance as an ailing patriarch with a favourite daughter and nowhere to stay, in a film directed by Florian Zeller, and adapted by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s own award-winning stage play. There is unbearable heartbreak in this movie, for which Hopkins has become history’s oldest best actor Oscar-winner , and also genuine fear, like something you might experience watching Roman Polanski’s Repulsion or M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.

Hopkins is Anthony, a roguishly handsome and cantankerous old widower, a retired engineer who lives on his own in a spacious, well-appointed apartment in west London, receiving regular visits from his affectionate and exasperated daughter Anne, who is played at the highest pitch of intelligence and insight by Olivia Colman .

But things are very wrong, because Anthony has dementia. He is subject to mood-swings and fits of temper connected with his sudden terror at not being able to work out what is going on. His behaviour has already caused his existing carer to quit, and now Anne tells him that he simply has to get on with the new one, Laura (Imogen Poots). This is because Anne, after the end of her marriage to Paul (Rufus Sewell) – to whom we will be introduced later – has now at last found a new partner and the opportunity for happiness that she deserves. She is going abroad with him, and can’t look after Anthony any more.

What is deeply scary about The Father is that, without obvious first-person camera tricks, it puts us inside Anthony’s head. We see and don’t see what he sees and doesn’t see. We are cleverly invited to assume that certain passages of dialogue are happening in reality – and then shown that they aren’t. We experience with Anthony, step by step, what appears to be the incremental deterioration in his condition, the disorientating time slips and time loops. People morph into other people; situations get elided; the apartment’s furniture seems suddenly and bewilderingly to change; a scene which had appeared to follow the previous one sequentially turns out to have preceded it, or to be Anthony’s delusion or his memory of something else. And new people, people he doesn’t recognise (played by Mark Gatiss and Olivia Williams) keep appearing in his apartment and responding to him with that same sweet smile of patience when he asks what they are doing there. The universe is gaslighting Anthony with these people.

Imogen Poots, Olivia Colman and Hopkins.

Anthony is of course different from Lear in one particular: he doesn’t know what is happening to him, or has happened. Things are too far gone. But Hopkins shows how an awareness of his previous existence is still there at a deeper, almost physical level, sometimes resurfacing in his devastatingly contrite little apologies to Anne. And one scene with Paul in which Anthony becomes whimperingly afraid shows us that there are things that Anne doesn’t know about Anthony’s life.

Hopkins’s final speech to Williams is the one that reduced me to a blubbering mess. But the most subtly poignant moments are those in which Anthony will laugh – a flash of his old, roguishly charming self – and Anne and his carer will supportively laugh along with him. To some degree, it is a nervous laugh because Anne knows just how easily his mood can turn, and it is also a professional carer’s laugh, and a strained tragicomic laugh, the laugh you do instead of crying. But it’s also a perfectly genuine kind of laugh and, in its way, an urgent, shared gesture of faith in the person that Anthony was and occasionally still is.

The Father has something of Michael Haneke’s Amour in its one-apartment setting, and also something of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1985 stage-play Woman in Mind, in which the heroine retreats from reality. Its effects are essentially theatrical – but they are powerfully achieved, and the performances from Hopkins and Colman are superb. It is a film about grief and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive.

Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
Drama films
Anthony Hopkins
Olivia Colman
Olivia Williams
Mark Gatiss
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The Garfield Movie

After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist... Read all After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist. After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.

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Trivia Frank Welker , who's voiced Garfield since 2007, expressed his disappointment at not being asked to voice the character for this film.

Jon : Say when!

[as he starts grating parmesan cheese on lasagne; from teaser and official trailers]

Garfield : Never, Jon! Bury me in cheese!

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Movie Review: ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ finds a new hero and will blow your mind

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Noa, played by Owen Teague, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Proximus Caesar, played by Kevin Durand, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Raka, played by Peter Macon, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Soona, played by Lydia Peckham, left and Noa, played by Owen Teague, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Noa, played by Owen Teague, from left, Freya Allan as Nova, and Raka, played by Peter Macon, in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Freya Allan in a scene from “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

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Fans of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise may still be mourning the 2017 death of Caesar, the first smart chimp and the charismatic ape leader. Not to worry: He haunts the next episode, the thrilling, visually stunning “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

We actually start with Caesar’s funeral, his body decorated with flowers and then set alight like a Viking, before fast-forwarding “many generations later.” All apes talk now and most humans don’t, reduced to caveman loin cloths and running wide-eyed and scared, evolution in reverse.

Our new hero is the young ape Noa (Owen Teague ) who is like all young adult chimps — seeking his father’s approval (even chimp dads just don’t understand) and testing his bravery. He is part of a clan that raises pet eagles, smokes fish and lives peacefully.

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Soona, played by Lydia Peckham, left and Noa, played by Owen Teague, in a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)

That all changes when his village is attacked not by humans but by fellow apes — masked soldiers from a nasty kingdom led by the crown-wearing Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, playing it to the hilt). He has taken Caesar’s name but twisted his words to become a tyrannical strongman — sorry, strongape.

Unlike the last movie which dealt with man’s inhumanity to animals — concentration camps included — ape-on-ape violence is in the cards for this one, including capturing an entire clan as prisoners. Proximus Caesar’s goons use makeshift cattle prods on fellow apes and force them to work while declaring “For Caesar!”

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ryan Gosling in a scene from "The Fall Guy." (Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures via AP)

Screenwriter Josh Friedman has cleverly created a movie that examines how ancient stories can be hijacked and manipulated, like how Caesar’s non-violent message gets twisted by bad actors. There’s also a lot of “Avatar” primitive naivete, and that makes sense since the reboot was shaped by several of that blue alien movie’s makers.

The movie poses some uncomfortable questions about collaborationists. William H. Macy plays a human who has become a sort of teacher-prisoner to Proximus Caesar — reading Kurt Vonnegut to him — and won’t fight back. “It is already their world,” he rationalizes.

Along for the heroic ride is a human young woman (Freya Allan, a budding star) who is hiding an agenda but offers Noa help along the way. Peter Macon plays a kindly, book-loving orangutan who adds a jolt of gleeful electricity to the movie and is missed when he goes.

The effects are just jaw-dropping, from the ability to see individual hairs on the back of a monkey to the way leaves fall and the crack of tree limbs echoing in the forest. The sight of apes on horseback, which seemed glitchy just seven years ago, are now seamless. There are also inside jokes, like the use of the name Nova again this time.

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Freya Allan in a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)

Director Wes Ball nicely handles all the thrilling sequences — though the two-and-a-half hour runtime is somewhat taxing — and some really cool ones, like the sight of apes on horseback on a beach, a nod to the original 1968 movie. And like when the apes look through some old illustrated kids’ books and see themselves depicted in zoo cages. That makes for some awkward human-ape interaction. “What is next for apes? Should we go back to silence?” our hero asks.

The movie races to a complex face-off between good and bad apes and good and bad humans outside a hulking silo that holds promise to each group. Can apes and humans live in peace, as Caesar hoped? “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” doesn’t answer that but it does open up plenty more to ponder. Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” a 20th Century Studios release that is exclusively in theaters May 10, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action.” Running time: 145 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/kingdom-of-the-planet-of-the-apes

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Adam Driver Reunites with Jim Jarmusch for New Movie Father Mother Sister Brother

Adam Driver joins the star-studded cast of Jim Jarmusch's latest film, the musical drama Father Mother Sister Brother.

Adam Driver will star in Jim Jarmusch's new movie, Father Mother Sister Brother , exploring relationships between children, siblings, and parents.
The film was shot across America, Ireland, and France and is, like many Jarmusch pictures, described as comedic with a touch of melancholy.
This is Driver's third collaboration with Jarmusch, continuing his work with some of the best directors alive. He also stars in this year's Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola.

Adam Driver has signed on to star in director Jim Jarmusch 's next movie, titled Father Mother Sister Brother . The report comes from Variety, which states that Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat have also joined the movie. Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps are also appearing in the film, which was rumored earlier this year after they appeared in leaked set photos.

Father Mother Sister Brother recently wrapped shooting, and new details have emerged about the project. Jarmusch's latest movie is a triptych story , following three groups of characters across the world (similar to his films Night on Earth and Coffee and Cigarettes ). This particular anthology explores the relationships between adult children and their parents. Variety's report stated the Father will be set on the East Coast of America, the Mother in Dublin, Ireland, and the Sister Brother in Paris, France. This information also explains the film's international shooting schedule, which, of course, jumped between America, Ireland, and France. The official description reads:

" Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents."

The film is also reported to have several musical elements, although the extent to which the film is a musical is still unclear. Father Mother Sister Brother marks Adam Driver's third partnership with Jim Jarmusch. The pair previously worked together on the 2019 horror/comedy The Dead Don't Die , also starring Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton, as well as the 2016 drama Paterson .

A 7-Minute Cannes Standing Ovation and a Divided Rotten Tomatoes Score - Coppola's Megalopolis Has Arrived

The film also reunites Jarmusch with his long-time collaborator Tom Waits , who first worked with the director on Down by Law way back in 1986, and has starred in four more of his films since then. Variety's report also described Father Mother Sister Brother as "one of Jarmusch’s most personal films," with its official description stating the movie is a "comedy interwoven with threads of melancholy," and features "character studies, quiet, observational and non-judgmental."

No release date has been confirmed for Father Mother Sister Brother . However, given that the film has wrapped shooting, the movie is expected to release in late 2024/early 2025.

Adam Driver Also Stars in Megalopolis, Continues to Work with the Greatest Directors

Adam Driver's career continues to grow. While his most public role was in Disney's Star Wars sequel trilogy as Kylo Ren - which partnered the actor with directors J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson - across his career, Driver has provided performances for some of the greatest directors . See the table below to learn just how many incredible filmmakers have cast Driver in their films.

Driver currently stars in Francis Ford Coppola's mind-bending sci-fi epic Megalopolis . The film centers on an architect (played by Driver) who aspires to rebuild New York into a utopia following a major disaster. Megalopolis recently had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and has been met with incredibly divisive and contradicting reactions. One report claims the film received a seven-minute standing ovation, while another claims the film was booed by audiences. The film's Cannes debut also came with news that it will receive a global IMAX release. However, a date has not yet been confirmed as the movie is still being sold to other distributors at the festival. Watch the trailer for Megalopolis below:

Frustrating biopic 'Back to Black' flattens Amy Winehouse story

Empathetic to the late singer’s ex-husband and father, film seems to be a response to the defining, oscar-winning doc ‘amy.’.

Marisa Abela stars as Amy Winehouse, with Jack O’Connell as her on-again, off-again lover Blake Fielder-Civil, in “Back to Black.”

Focus Features

“Back to Black” as a movie is a tame and mediocre affair. A conventionally told biopic about a talented artist who became famous, struggled with drugs, depression and bulimia, and died early. There are nice performances from gifted actors Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville, and a soundtrack of hits that helps fill the space.

But as a portrait of Amy Winehouse? It is simply dreadful.

The main problem with any movie about Winehouse is that a defining film already exists — Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning documentary “Amy,” released four years after her death from alcohol poisoning at age 27. Told through archival material, home videos and observations from those around her, it felt as intimate and unfiltered as a diary.

“Amy” was a sobering portrait of addiction, fame and complicity that also let you get to know and love the person behind the songs, the eyeliner, the beehive, the bloodied ballet slippers and the invasive paparazzi photos. It was no one’s idea of sensationalistic and she’s doing most of the talking.

“Amy” was also a movie that didn’t sit well with her grieving family. Her father, Mitch Winehouse, said it was misleading and contained “basic untruths.” After it won the Oscar, he doubled down saying that it had no bearing on her life and was manipulative. Kapadia, he said, was more exploitative of his daughter than anyone.

Following her death, Mitch started a foundation in her name to help young people and wrote a book about her and being the father of an addict. Her mother Janis narrated a documentary, “Reclaiming Amy,” released in 2011. And after years of declining to participate in a narrative biopic, the estate decided to allow one with full use of the songs. Like many musical biopics made alongside an estate, it’s hard not to look at “Back to Black” skeptically, wondering whose interests the film is serving.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed, has said that she wanted to take the idea of “blame” out of the equation, and that the family had zero input on her cut and would not benefit financially. And yet it also seems like a direct response to Kapadia’s film, depicting more than a few key moments wildly differently. They’re not just shown in a different light — some are telling a completely different story.

The screenplay by Matthew Greenhalgh is empathetic to her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (O’Connell) and her father Mitch (Marsan), both of whom have been villainized over the years. In the film, most are just caught up in a whirl of inevitability and the retrospective blur of grief.

There seems to be an excessive amount of rationalizing in the way everyone involved talks about “Back to Black,” over justifying its existence and its choices. But just because everyone keeps telling us that it’s a celebration doesn’t mean that we have to get on board. I’m not sure what is celebratory about dramatizing this tragedy, or helpful, or artful, or particularly revelatory about it either. The media, for example, is reduced mainly to the paparazzi camped outside her place as though that’s where the problem stopped.

Taylor-Johnson has said she didn’t want to glamorize depression, addiction or bulimia either, but the latter, which she struggled with before she was famous, is barely even acknowledged. Depiction of eating disorders is inherently fraught, but there had to have been a way to address such a large part of her life and self-image more directly.

Though linear, the story is also oddly confusing, assuming that the audience knows many details of her life (like, say, the bulimia) and the people in it. The film rushes through major career moments in montage, seeming to slow down only for a few things: a performance, Amy’s face in various forms of drunken distress and agony or scenes with her and Blake. Was it attempting a freewheeling jazz form, or is it just messy?

In some ways, this portrait of Amy Winehouse makes her immense talent the sideshow and her obsession/romance/heartache over Blake the defining story of her adult life. This is at least somewhat redeemed by the chemistry between Abela and O’Connell, who look far too glowing and healthy to be believable as heroin addicts.

But the greatest failing is how shockingly cliche the ending is. For all of “Back to Black’s” tiptoeing around delicate subjects, its romantically photographed sendoff to Amy is perhaps the most dangerously glamorized shot in the film. It doesn’t even fade to black after a title card announces her death. Before anyone can feel anything, they’ve cut to Amy telling the audience that all she wants is for her songs to make people forget about their troubles for a bit.

By this point, it reads more like a closing statement for a film that never wanted to challenge, offend or move anyone. Mission accomplished.

Occasionally clever ‘IF’ lacks the emotion, ingenuity a great family film needs

Xander Schauffele watches his tee shot on the fourth hole during the third round of the PGA Championship on Saturday at the Valhalla Golf Club.

‘Three Kilometers To The End Of The World' Review: Emanuel Parvu's Drama An Expansive Tale Of Corruption And Lies – Cannes Film Festival

When Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) is beaten up outside the one dance club in the village where he grew up, his father takes up the cudgels, chivvying the local police chief into finding out who did it. It would be obvious enough to anyone but dad Dragoi (Bogdan Dumitrache ) that this is a straight-up case of gay-bashing, which would seem to signal that Emanuel Parvu's Cannes Competition title Three Kilometers to the End of the World , a slice of Romanian life, will be a worthy but familiar story of a boy's coming out to a hostile world. Indeed, bloodied Adi with his black eyes and traumatic lesions is soon being punished, locked in his room by his parents as his desperate mother prays to the icons on the wall for guidance. We have undoubtedly been down this donkey-track before.

Nothing in a small village, however, happens in isolation. The beating has points of connection with so many aspects of community life and its power brokers – the police chief on the brink of retirement, the local property king whose sons do the bashing and to whom Dragoi owes a sum of money he has no hope of pulling together, the priest whose authority derives from the faithful and the fearful – that Parvu's film becomes something like an emotional map of the community.

RELATED: Cannes Film Festival Photos

Instead of roads and houses, it shows where friendship, mutual support and favors exchanged have rotted into the muck of corruption. Instead of landmarks, it shows the culture's stress points. As the story progresses, Adi himself becomes the still center of a swirl of forces that act together – as they would have done in so many other circumstances - to ensure justice will never be done.

Nor will the family heal. Adi has just finished school and is applying to universities. His parents live from fishing and poaching. They know their son is clever and have made sacrifices to keep him in a city school; he is their life. Dumitrache - perhaps the leading actor of the Romanian New Wave - grows increasingly hollow-eyed with misery as Dragoi, whose hopes for the future are entirely invested in his beloved son, sees his small world fall apart. His wife (Laura Vasiliu, a noted theater actor) is blank with incomprehension that God has let her down so badly. Their bewildered despair becomes the focus as Adi waits out their flailing, furious attempts to fix things.

Parvu is careful to show the complexity of these people as well as of their weave of betrayals, mistakes and wrongdoing. Even Zentov (Richard Bovnoczki), to whom bribes and threats are everyday calling cards, lashes out hard only because he knows his sons face prison time. He wants to protect them, as he tells Dragoi; doesn't he also want to protect his son? The local priest (Adrian Titieni), who presides over a scene of forced exorcism that is truly sickening, clearly believes his own justification for his petty authority: that he should be trusted in the same way people trust doctors.

The actors bring to these portraits the naturalistic ease combined with intensity that is a hallmark of Romanian New Wave cinema, each one a whole person with their own reasons. Zentov and his confederates may be villains, but not the kind who wear capes: it is villainy submerged in normality.

The story is set in the Danube delta, where sunsets are vast and it is possible to go anywhere else only by boat. A widescreen format leaves room to show this expanse of wetlands in all its glory; there is no music, but a constant susurration of wind in the trees and bushes, sometimes accompanied by the ripple of water in the reeds at the water's edge, provides a perfect soundtrack, the rustling of leaves a calm presence that can also feel frenetic when amplified. Adi texts the boy he met at the disco – a text revealed when his father forces him to open up his phone – to say he feels as if he is suffocating. Yet this is a place, as Parvu shows us, where there should be so much room to breathe. If they could just look about them, they might all be free.

Title: Three Kilometers to the End of the World

Festival: Cannes (Competition)

Director-screenwriter: Emanuel Parvu

Cast: Bogdan Dumitrache, Ciprian Chiujdea, Laura Vasily

Sales agent: Memento

Running time: 1 hr 45 min

‘Young Sheldon’ Is One of TV’s Most Popular Shows. So Why Did It Just End?

The “Big Bang Theory” spinoff aired its last episodes Thursday night, but the franchise will continue on CBS this fall.

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A woman in a black dress looks concerned by a young man in a black suit and bow tie

By Noel Murray

This article includes spoilers for the “Young Sheldon” series finale.

In last week’s episode of the CBS sitcom “Young Sheldon,” a laid-back, beer-drinking Texas high school football coach named George Cooper (Lance Barber) says goodbye to his family and goes to work. He never comes home: George dies of a heart attack later that day. The tragedy sets up the series’s last two episodes, which premiered Thursday night on CBS: They are about what happens when someone so steady, so reliable and so unassuming is just … gone.

A spinoff of “The Big Bang Theory,” the long-running CBS hit, “Young Sheldon” has been steady, reliable and unassuming over its seven seasons. This warm family sitcom, which fills in the back story of the “Big Bang Theory” breakout character Sheldon Cooper — played by Jim Parsons in the original and Iain Armitage in the prequel — has quietly been one of TV’s most-watched shows since it debuted in 2017.

And now it, too, is gone. The series finale takes Sheldon from the small town of Medford, Texas, where he attended high school at 9 and college at 11 as his family tried to understand and accommodate his genius, to the California Institute of Technology, where “The Big Bang Theory” is set. The episode included appearances by Parsons and Mayim Bialik, whose character, Amy, marries Sheldon in the original show.

The franchise will continue this fall with another spinoff: “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” It will follow Sheldon’s good ol’ boy older brother George Jr. (Montana Jordan) and his wife, Mandy (Emily Osment), as they raise their baby daughter.

“Young Sheldon” was a smash from the start, and while its network TV audience has shrunk (just like most every other show’s), its episodes elsewhere have drawn newer, younger viewers . Reruns air on the cable network TBS almost daily. Netflix licensed the show late last year, and it has since appeared regularly on that service’s self-reported Top 10 most-streamed TV series.

Yet despite its pervasiveness in TikTok memes , “Young Sheldon” has never been much of a cultural phenomenon. Television critics rarely write about it, and the Emmys have ignored it entirely — it has yet to get a single nomination. “The Big Bang Theory,” one of TV’s most-watched shows for much of its 12-season run, which ended in 2019, had a mixed critical reputation. But it did get press coverage, and was a legitimate Emmy contender, earning four nominations for best comedy series and picking up four wins for Parsons.

The “Young Sheldon” finale, meanwhile, came and went on Thursday night without much advance hype. Unless you regularly watch shows on CBS, you may not have known it was ending.

You may also be wondering: If it’s so popular, why is it ending?

In a phone interview, Steven Molaro, who created “Young Sheldon” with Chuck Lorre, and Steve Holland, an executive producer who has been a writer on the show since Season 2, explained that the series has always had an expiration date. This is because the story they inherited from “The Big Bang Theory” established that Sheldon began attending graduate school at Caltech at 14, the same year his father died.

The “Young Sheldon” team delayed the inevitable once, by holding the characters of Sheldon and his twin sister, Missy (Raegan Revord), at the same age for two seasons. But that trick could not be repeated indefinitely.

“The premise of the show is that an exceptional young kid is thrust into a world where everyone is older than him,” Holland said. “But as soon as Iain aged and Sheldon aged, he didn’t look that out of place anymore, even in college.”

So when Holland and Molaro sat down with Lorre to plot out Season 7 after the writers’ strike was settled, they decided their prequel had reached its natural conclusion. The tight post-strike production timeline meant they had to inform the cast about the decision on a group Zoom call, which surprised some of them. (In a Variety interview , Annie Potts, who plays Sheldon’s “Meemaw,” described her initial reaction as “shocked” and “ambushed.”) But whatever mixed feelings the cast may have had about the series coming to an end, it doesn’t show in their performances in the final two episodes, which strike the usual “Young Sheldon” balance of gentle good humor and soft sentimental pangs.

In the penultimate episode, “Funeral” (which aired Thursday night right before the finale), the Cooper family struggles with saying goodbye to George, with Sheldon revisiting his last moments with his father and thinking of the things he could have said to him but didn’t.

The episode ends on a poignant note, as Sheldon’s devoutly religious mother, Mary (Zoe Perry), rages at God at the memorial service before Meemaw steps in to lighten the mood. (She jokes that no one is sadder about George dying than the Lone Star beer company.) Sheldon, still lost in his own head, imagines the heartfelt eulogy he is too numb to give.

The finale, “Memoir,” tells a more typical “Young Sheldon” story, about Mary trying to get Sheldon baptized before he leaves for college. In framing scenes, the older Sheldon and Amy argue about his parenting of their own children, underlining one of the show’s main themes: that Sheldon’s parents, while dealing with all the usual messes of everyday life, did the best they could to take care of him. The episode closes with a shot of the 14-year-old Sheldon at Caltech, connecting everything back to “The Big Bang Theory”; the adult Sheldon is working as a Caltech physicist when that series begins.

Holland said Lorre pitched the idea of having Parsons and Bialik appear in the finale to make the episode feel a bit more “significant.” (Parsons, who is also an executive producer of “Young Sheldon,” has been the show’s narrator from the beginning, but this is his first on-camera appearance.) As for the differences between the last two episodes — one heavy, one lighter — Molaro said they wanted something “a little more positive and upbeat” for their ending.

“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” which was created by Lorre, Molaro and Holland, will be a multicamera sitcom shot with a live audience, like “The Big Bang Theory.” (“Young Sheldon” is a single-camera series with no audience, a choice Molaro said was made to “let the show feel like its own thing.”) They hope to have some “Young Sheldon” regulars appear as guest stars, if they figure out how to do that without turning the new show into what Holland called “Older Young Sheldon.”

As for the legacy of “Young Sheldon,” that will now depend largely on whether it remains as popular as it has been on Netflix, where Molaro said the show is being discovered by kids who have never been in the habit of watching prime-time network TV. Despite the lack of critical buzz, “Young Sheldon” has always been good family television, with a likable cast of youngsters and showbiz veterans helping to tell slice-of-life stories that push deeper than some viewers may expect into topics like religious hypocrisy, marital strife and how it feels to share a household with someone both irritatingly eccentric and astonishingly brilliant.

The final episodes of “Young Sheldon” were designed to hit many of the notes that the show had played so well during its run, ending with a finale that Holland wanted to have “a little bit of humor and a little bit of hope.” The series finishes in an understated and touching way — going out just as it came in.

An earlier version of this article in one instance misspelled the given name of an actor. He is Iain Armitage, not Ian.

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The Father movie review & film summary (2021)
A watch. A painting. A chicken dinner. A snippet of conversation. These and other everyday pieces of a life take on greater significance and heartbreaking meaning throughout the course of "The Father.". They're at once mundane and unreliable, tactile and elusive within the ever-shifting mind of Anthony Hopkins ' character, an 80-year ...
The Father
Led by stellar performances and artfully helmed by writer-director Florian Zeller, The Father presents a devastatingly empathetic portrayal of dementia. With Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman ...
'The Father' review: Anthony Hopkins at his devastating best
Review: 'The Father' showcases Anthony Hopkins at his devastating best. Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in the movie 'The Father.". The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film ...
'The Father' Review: A Capricious Mind
NYT Critic's Pick. Directed by Florian Zeller. Drama. PG-13. 1h 37m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission ...
The Father review
The Father review - Hopkins a wordy Oscar winner. Academy winner Anthony Hopkins tackles the script's verbosity with aplomb but this study of dementia remains somewhat stagey. T his year's ...
'The Father' Review: Anthony Hopkins' Mind Is Playing Tricks On Him
The Father is thus both a psychological detective story and a stealth haunted-house movie. It's an exceedingly clever and polished piece of filmmaking, and it marks an impressive feature debut for ...
The Father
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2022. Keith Garlington Keith & the Movies. "The Father" is a tough watch. But the bold choices, the emotional honesty, the crisp detailed ...
Movie Review: 'The Father' : NPR
Movie Review: 'The Father' An elderly pensioner, played by Anthony Hopkins, refuses all assistance, to the distress of his daughter, played by Olivia Colman, in the dementia drama The Father.
'The Father' Review: Anthony Hopkins Gives a Tour-de ...
Camera: Ben Smithard. Editor: Yorgos Lamprinos. Music: Ludovico Einaudi. With: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots , Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams. Anthony Hopkins gives a ...
'The Father': Film Review
Courtesy of Sundance. The best film about the wages of aging since Amour eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insightful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia and the toll it ...
The Father (2021) Movie Review
The Father Review: Florian Zeller's Directorial Debut Is An Effective Drama The Father (2021) By Mae Abdulbaki. Published Mar 12, 2021. ... Next: Every Movie Confirmed For 2021 (So Far) The Father is in theaters March 12 and is available on premium video on demand beginning March 26. The film is 97 minutes long and rated PG-13 for some strong ...
The Father review
The Nest review - Jude Law and Carrie Coon fall apart in eerie 80s drama Read more Based on the acclaimed, award-winning play, The Father starts out as a deceptively simple drama hinged on a ...
The Father Review
The Father is a devastating masterwork by first-time director Florian Zeller, based on his play Le Père. The film follows an old man with dementia (Anthony Hopkins) and manipulates its editing ...
The Father review: Anthony Hopkins' dementia drama is a quiet revelation
The Father. is a quiet revelation: Review. T he Father is hardly the first prestige drama to address dementia — in fact, it's actually the third in this past month alone, after Supernova and the ...
The Father Is a Devastating Close-up on Dementia: Review
The Father is assembled like a puzzle box, its chronology curling in on itself in cunning ways. Certain details — a chicken dinner, a divorce, the arrival of a new home aide named Laura (Imogen ...
'The Father' review: Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman star in this
'The Father' is a meticulously constructed story in which very little is what it seems. Review by Ann Hornaday. March 9, 2021 at 2:36 p.m. EST ... exquisitely crafted movie "The Father ...
The Father
The Father, of course, is a very sad movie, one that mercilessly marches through the realities of fading by inches. The Father, of course, is a very sad movie, one that mercilessly marches through the realities of fading by inches. ... Movie Review. The mind, like the body, is a creation of dizzying intricacy. Just as we don't think about how ...
The Father Review: Anthony Hopkins Leads a Harrowing Drama ...
Florian Zeller's film makes an inexplicably cruel element of the human condition recognizable in a way that only good art can. Editor's note: This review was originally published at the 2020 ...
The Father Review
by Nick De Semlyen |. Published on 10 06 2021. Original Title: The Father. Back in 2000, a filmmaker named Christopher Nolan made his American debut with Memento, an emotionally brutal thriller ...
The Father Movie Review
What you will—and won't—find in this movie. Character remarks on another being "gorgeous." Parents need to know that The Father is an excellent -- but at times upsetting -- drama about a man suffering with Alzheimer's. Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman star as father and daughter, Anthony and Anne, with Anthony being diagnosed ...
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The Father (2020)
The Father: Directed by Florian Zeller. With Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams. A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.
The Father
The Father is a devastating and brutally effective piece of cinema, anchored by astonishing performances from Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.Cole: 8.5/10J...
The Garfield Movie (2024)
The Garfield Movie: Directed by Mark Dindal. With Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames. After Garfield's unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, ragged alley cat Vic, he and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered lives to join Vic on a risky heist.
'Young Sheldon' delivers a long-awaited shock as the CBS show ...
The elder Sheldon (Jim Parsons) had referenced his father's death, and when it happened, during "The Big Bang Theory," although with the benefit of hindsight he wasn't always the most ...
Movie Review: 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' finds a new hero and
Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy. "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," a 20th Century Studios release that is exclusively in theaters May 10, is rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action.". Running time: 145 minutes.
Adam Driver Reunites with Jim Jarmusch for New Movie Father Mother
Father Mother Sister Brother marks Adam Driver's third partnership with Jim Jarmusch. The pair previously worked together on the 2019 horror/comedy The Dead Don't Die, also starring Bill Murray ...
'Back to Black' review: Frustrating biopic flattens Amy Winehouse story
Empathetic to the late singer's ex-husband and father, film seems to be a response to the defining, Oscar-winning doc 'Amy.'. Marisa Abela stars as Amy Winehouse, with Jack O'Connell as ...
'Three Kilometers To The End Of The World' Review: Emanuel ...
When Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) is beaten up outside the one dance club in the village where he grew up, his father takes up the cudgels, chivvying the local police chief into finding out who did it.
'Young Sheldon' Is One of TV's Most Popular Shows. So Why Did It Just
In last week's episode of the CBS sitcom "Young Sheldon," a laid-back, beer-drinking Texas high school football coach named George Cooper (Lance Barber) says goodbye to his family and goes ...

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