Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

If you have or have had a close loved one who suffered from some form of dementia, The Father would very well be on some level triggering. If you fear such a fate in your own future (as I do; few things frighten me more), it could be horrifying. This film is ostensibly a drama, but to many it could be considered a true nightmare.

It scared the hell out of me, anyway—because this is not your run-of-the-mill story about severe memory loss. We’ve seen a bunch of those (and I’ve reviewed two just within the past month), but never before has the point of view been wholly within the mind of the person experiencing memory loss.

This calls for some very skilled editing, reflective of how Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) keeps finding his memories mixed together. The Father can be a little confusing, until you realize what writer-director Florian Zeller is doing here. Anthony sporadically does not recognize the people in his life, most notably his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman), and when that occurs, another actor stands in for the character. Thankfully, this happens only a few times, although the first occurrence is so early in the film that at first the only understandable reaction is Wait, what?

The people Anthony sees in this way wind up actually being other characters who do exist in his life, just in other contexts that he is conflating with each other: an assisted living nurse, or his son-in-law. Perhaps this revelation could be regarded as a sort of spoiler, but I think it’s better for you to know what you’re getting into with The Father. The construction of this narrative, which is not at all linear, is very complex, but even though Anthony can never quite keep them straight, by the end the viewer is able to put the pieces together. Honestly, if this film deserves any Oscar nomination, it would be for Best Editing. Zeller based this on his own 2012 French play of the same name (Le Père), and I keep wondering how this was done as a live performance onstage.

In a small irony, The Father was filmed in 2019, before anyone had any idea a film like this would be perfect for production under current pandemic restrictions: the cast is quite small, with only six principal characters, and merely another three ever even seen onscreen. The vast majority of screen time is taken by Hopkins and Colman, of course, but then three different caretakers and a son-in-law serve as the people Anthony keeps confusing with each other. But, given the state of his memory, one scene will run into the next even though the actual events may have taken place years apart, or he might find that the scene that just ended somehow just starts over again. In some sense, it’s like Memento for the senile.

Except it’s more than just senility at play here, of course. I already have a long history of a screwy memory—but I do always know where I am, and who is with me. Anthony loses his watch and is convinced a caretaker has stolen it. He’s obsessed with the changes in his flat, and his insistence that he won’t leave it, and we learn at the same time that he does that he’s not actually in his own flat at all: he’s in some other living situation, or yet another one again.

Given that we learn pertinent and relevant details at the same time Anthony does, I do wonder about the few scenes, particularly with Anne, that take place outside of his presence. Is that also meant to be part of his imagination? His assumptions of what she’s doing or saying? These scenes still always start or end with Anthony as a part of them, and they often start where a previous one ended, only with certain odd details changed, like paper grocery sacks instead of plastic.

The net effect of all this is both profoundly sad and terrifying. Movies about dementia tend to focus exclusively on the sad part, but The Father is just as concerned with how the person experiencing it feels like they’re descending into madness, giving the viewer a real taste of that experience. I’m not even sure Zeller meant for it to be so frightening, and maybe it won’t be for other viewers. Results may vary, but the experience of watching this movie seriously gave me the creeps.

Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony (so named because Zeller wrote the part exclusively for him) as a man who veers between irritability, confusion, and rage. You can see a man who must have once been quite the charmer by nature, but now every direction he turns, no matter how long what he sees has actually been there, is a surprise. Olivia Colman plays Anne as a middle-aged woman trying too hard to take care of her father herself, until necessity becomes more pressing than her guilt. And her performance should not be discarded, considering the nuances of what may or may not just be imagined, or certainly confused, by Anthony.

In any event, The Father is a trip, and a unique one at that. It’s such a singular experience, it certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. I couldn’t even say it was mine, exactly, but its craftsmanship still left me impressed.

*Reassurances are small comfort when you can’t remember them.*

Overall: B+