70 THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021
THE CURRENTCINEMA
FINAL ACTS
“The Father,” “I Care a Lot.”BYANTHONYLANE
ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY
T
he hero of “The Father” is an old
man named Anthony. He is played
by Anthony Hopkins, and the two of
them, fictional and real, share a date of
birth—the final day of 1937. When we
first meet Anthony, he is wearing head-
phones and listening to music: a high
and stammering plea, sung by a coun-
tertenor. It comes from Purcell’s “King
Arthur,” and the lyrics, by John Dryden,
tell a chilling tale: “What power art
thou, who from below/Hast made me
rise, unwillingly, and slow,/From beds
of everlasting snow?” There is no bet-
ter guide to the plight of Anthony, upon
whom the season of dementia has de-
scended. He is all iced up.
The film is directed by Florian Zeller.
It comes from his play of the same name,
which he has adapted for the screen, in
consort with Christopher Hampton.
Most of the action unfolds in a Lon-
don apartment, which retains the air of
a stage set; a fine light slants in from
one side, as though we were trapped in
a perpetual late afternoon. Occasion-
ally, the characters venture into the ex-
ternal world, but it feels like a foreign
country. Anthony stares out of the win-
dow and spies a kid, in the street, toss-
ing and kicking a plastic bag. Such is
the lenient envy with which age regards
the idleness of youth.
Anthony had a caregiver, who has
recently quit, claiming that he mal-
treated her. His daughter, Anne (Olivia
Colman), who comes to see him, is galledby the situation, but Anthony is mul-
ish and unmoved. “I don’t need anyone,”
he says. It’s not long, however, before
this proud self-reliance gives way to a
wheedling cry. When Anne announces
that she may be moving to Paris, he re-
plies, “You’re abandoning me. What’s
going to become of me?” Shyly, he rests
his hand against the side of his face—a
Hopkins trademark, visible in “The Re-
mains of the Day” (1993), and suggest-
ing a need to shield himself from the
scrutinizing glare of other people.
At this stage, we are braced for a
harsh and realistic portrait of a failing
mind, and of the loved ones who get
hurt along the way. To an extent, “The
Father” fulfills that brief. But something
else emerges here: a mystery, all themore disconcerting for being so matter-
of-fact. Anthony walks into an adjoin-
ing room, finds a man sitting there, and
inquires, “Who are you?” The man ex-
plains that he is Paul (Mark Gatiss),
Anne’s partner, and that he, too, lives in
the apartment. When we next see Paul,
however, he is played by Rufus Sewell
instead of Gatiss, and is far more abra-
sive than the earlier incarnation. As for
Anne, she is played not only by Col-
man but also by Olivia Williams—who,
like Gatiss, will later show up in an-
other role. What’s going on?
Zeller is not the first director to jum-
ble his dramatis personae, and to main-
tain a cool composure in the process.
When Luis Buñuel was at an impasse
in the creation of “That Obscure Ob-
ject of Desire” (1977), he hit upon the
idea—“after two dry Martinis,” as he
said—of having a pair of alternating ac-
tresses play the heroine. The delectable
joke was that, to the roué of riper years
who yearned for her (and who appeared
not to notice her metamorphoses), she
thus became twice as unattainable, and
doubled her mockery of his lust. The
trick is repeated in “The Father,” but
for sadder reasons; Anthony is driven
by confusion rather than passion, and,
if the folks around him keep swapping
places, that is because his capacity for
human recognition has shrunk. In short,
we view the world through his bewil-
dered eyes. What looks like his apart-
ment is, in fact, the inside of his head.
A while ago, I saw “The Father” on-
stage, with a different cast. By the fol-
lowing morning, I had forgotten all
about it. Why, then, should the film
make so potent an impression? Partly
because of the deeper spatial perspec-
tives that moviegoing affords, and the
furtiveness that they encourage; unlike
a theatre audience, we can gaze down
the long hallway in Anthony’s apart-
ment, as he slips through a door at the
end of it and peers at us darkly through
the crack. Let’s be honest: the main-
spring of “The Father,” onscreen, is the
presence of Hopkins—an actor at the
frightening summit of his powers, por-
traying a man brought pitifully low.
The irony is too rare to resist.
One thing that distinguishes actors
of the loftiest rank is the fascination
that they breed in us as they carry out
quite ordinary deeds. A famous exam-Anthony Hopkins stars in Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his own play.