The Father, released on December 23, 2020, is a film directed by Florian Zeller and written by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, was inspired by the play Le Père premiered in September 2012 and won the Molière Award in 2014. The casts of the film are Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, and Ayesha Dharker. The film won the Oscar for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2021.
The film starts when an aging father refuses to be dependable on his daughters any form of assistance. But things escalate when the realities of his everyday life change rapidly. The father tries to make sense of the unusual changes while the daughter struggles to find a balance.
The movie is based on the aspect of Alzheimer's, a disease that slowly destroys the ability to remember. I’ve watched a handful of films that portrayed the heartbreaking and tragic effect this uncurable disease does on people, but most of those films didn’t choose the kind of approach, The Father did. The film chooses to throw the audience along with the main protagonist into the diabolical situations, creating a confusing bubble, questioning the authenticity of the situation, and after a while accepting whatever the people around the main protagonist insists.
The Father – The main protagonist, an aging man, refuses to be dependable. Father of two daughters, owner of a flat and obsessed with his watch, sometimes can be mistaken as rude and unthankful. The audience is set to go through the same journey as the protagonist Anthony, trying to make sense of the fractions of events and people. In the beginning like Anthony, the audience are ought to believe that Ann, his eldest daughter is going to Paris to live with her new partner, but as the film progress, she refuses to ever mention anything about moving to Paris, and like Anthony, the audience is also set to be confused. I like the aspect of how different it felt to witness the same conversation between Ann and Anthony at the beginning and end of the film.
The Daughter – The daughter in the film portrays how the loved ones of an Alzheimer's patient go through. The pain of not being recognized, the struggle to keep up a balance in life, sometimes the overwhelming emotions giving birth to dark thoughts of ending it all. Some people can blame the daughter for the action she took in the end, but it needs to be understood that, taking care of an Alzheimer's patient while providing for your own living is not easy. The patients need special care from the professionals as gradually they are even unable to do the simplest task. She did, what she had to do in the end.
“I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves. The branches and the wind and the rain. I don’t know what’s happening anymore.”
The quote portrays the depth of the dysfunctional realities, confusion, and the fear caused by the disease.
The approach the film took to show the picture of Alzheimer's is truly artistic. All the casts played their role beautifully and the subtle changes of emotions portrayed in the film are able to capture and adds more depth into the story. I highly recommend it.
The cover poster : Source
(The rest of the images are taken from the film)
