film. Terrifically acted and finely crafted though
it is, it’s a brilliant but hollow exercise in
perspective that calls more attention to its artful
orchestration than it does life or loss.
And yet, few, if any films, have so fully
illuminated the nightmare and confusion of
dementia. Rather than gawk at it, “The Father”
puts us smack in the middle of Anthony’s
personal hall of mirrors. We are just as unmoored
as he is, left to figure out what’s real and what’s
not as scenes are played and then, with shifting
details, replayed: Anne coming home with
chicken for dinner; her husband, Paul (Rufus
Sewell), sitting with the newspaper; an interview
with a prospective nurse (Imogen Poots).
In every encounter, Anthony struggles for
comprehension. He’s doubtful when facts don’t
line up, and outraged when he’s contradicted.
Sometimes, pangs of realization seem to flit
across his face when he’s at a loss he can’t
resolve. The stranger he finds in the apartment
tells him he’s Anne’s husband. The flat, the man
tells him, isn’t his. His wristwatch (another pun)
keeps going missing.
To see Hopkins play all these ever-fluctuating
turns of mood is riveting. He has grasped, at
least for a proud man like Anthony, how one’s
ego keeps fighting a battle it doesn’t know is
already lost. The resentment for a reality that
won’t cohere. “What is this nonsense?” asks
Anthony, furious. For an actor so intense, so
rigorously unsentimental, this is his Lear.
Yet “The Father” often feels like a clinical puzzle
to work out. By the time the fog clears — for
us, not Anthony — and the splices of memory
become synced, a final scene pushes “The