THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021 71
ple is that of James Stewart, in “Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), toy-
ing with the brim of his hat to indicate
social awkwardness, and the sight of
Hopkins, in “The Father,” pottering
about the kitchen, filling the kettle and
unpacking groceries, casts a compara-
ble spell. We could be watching a priest
preparing for Mass. This air of delib-
eration grows more intent with the in-
troduction of Laura (Imogen Poots), a
friendly young woman who is bravely
applying to be Anthony’s next caregiver.
Greeting her, with a silk handkerchief
rakishly tucked into the breast pocket
of his robe, he is charm personified—
flirting with her, flashing his grin, and
intimating that he used to be a dancer
by profession. (Not true. He was an en-
gineer.) He paces round and round the
living room, tracked by the camera, and
then unsheathes his rage:
“All I want is for everyone to fuck off. Hav-
ing said that, it’s been a great pleasure. Au re-
voir. Toodle-oo.”
It’s an astonishing sequence, tough-
ened by its mixture of the courtly and
the profane, and by the force with which
Hopkins hammers out his lines, strik-
ing the consonants until they spark.
(Elsewhere, he even stretches the word
“Anne” into a disyllable.) We cut away
to Anne, who hears his tirade in tears.
Why is it that this cramped family saga
should have a reach and a clutch that
were denied to other studies of demen-
tia, like “Away from Her” (2006) and
“Still Alice” (2015)? It is, I would argue,
because of the ghost of “King Lear.”
Hopkins played Lear at the National
Theatre, in 1986, and, in 2018, he re-
turned to the part for a television pro-
duction, directed by Richard Eyre. That
performance was oddly muffled in its
impact; the rage of the King felt pre-
determined, as though he were armed
for conflict in advance, whereas Antho-
ny’s ire, in the new film, bursts out of
nowhere, like thunder. To be sent to a
nursing home—his underlying terror—
would be like being evicted, in foul
weather, onto a blasted heath. “I’m los-
ing all my things, everyone’s just help-
ing themselves. If this goes on much
longer I’ll be stark naked,” he says, with
half a laugh, clinging madly to his apart-
ment much as Lear does to his retinue
of knights. (Anne, exasperated and fond,
is a Cordelia who gets raved at like a
Goneril.) Despite the strong ensemble
of supporting players, “The Father” is a
work of dreadful loneliness. Hopkins
rules the screen, swaying between gran-
deur and finicky fuss, and in Anthony’s
decline we see a portent. “Who, exactly,
am I?” he asks. And how many lives,
like his, must end in a one-man show?F
or an alternative approach to the
treatment of the elderly, lay aside
“The Father” and try “I Care a Lot,”
which is fast, hard, bright, and about as
gentle as a mouthful of sour candy. The
movie stars Rosamund Pike as Marla
Grayson, who is a guardian by trade.
This means that she takes over the af-
fairs, personal and financial, of senior
citizens who are no longer capable of
handling their own lives. It sounds like
a noble calling, and the authorities tend
to trust her. What they don’t know is
that a local doctor supplies her with
easy prey—“real high-maintenance ass-
holes,” we learn, who can be commit-
ted to a care facility, under a court order,while Marla strips their assets bare. As
she says to her latest victim, Jennifer
Peterson (Dianne Wiest), “You’re just
another old lady, in a care home, with
dementia, with incontinence, with ar-
thritis, and with no one. Except me.”
Written and directed by J. Blakeson,
the film is in love with its heartless her-
oine, loath to let her out of the camera’s
sight. We are invited to bask in her de-
pravity, and to side with her when things
go wrong—when Jennifer, far from being
meek and defenseless, turns out to have
(a) unregistered diamonds in a safe-
deposit box and (b) unsavory criminal
connections, in the shape of Roman
Lunyov (Peter Dinklage). Marla squares
off against Roman, whose unfathom-
able evil is signalled by the menacing
fashion in which he eats an éclair.
The trouble with “I Care a Lot” is
not how cynical it seems but how
pleased it is with that cynicism, forever
straining to top its own tastelessness.
(No wonder it’s so unwilling to let go;
the last film with this many endings
was the final part of “The Lord of the
Rings,” in 2003.) “To make it in this
country you need to be brave and stu-
pid and ruthless and focussed,” Marla
declares, and guardianship is revealed
to be just another wrench in the tool-
box of capitalism. Wiest, who gives the
least calculated and the most beguiling
performance, fades from the scene, and,
in essence, the movie does a Marla:
rather than paying genuine heed to the
aged, it uses them, wheels them away,
and parks them in a corner of the plot.
The old story. NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2021 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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