Tag: drama

The Father (2020)

4/4 stars

The Father is one of the most compassionate movies I have ever seen. Dementia is a serious subject that the film treats with a deep empathy that is brilliantly artful.
Director Florian Zeller’s writing (he also wrote the original stage play) is subtle and meditative and very brave in its honesty. Instead of taking the easier road of Oscar-bait where emotions are constantly elevated and every scene drips with melodrama, there is a quiet sincerity in the dialogue and performances that resonated with me as a human being. In years to come this film will be regarded as one of the best movies about mental illness ever made.

Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is an octogenarian living with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman). He has become well-advanced in dementia, struggling to recognize those around him and he requires constant care. Anthony frequently forgets that the apartment they share is hers and not his and he becomes confused as the many faces that come and go seem to blend together and are hard to identify. He lives a frustrating and frightening existence where each passing moment seems to come with wild changes in circumstances he cannot make sense of. Anne tells him she is moving to France with her husband and he is to be left in the apartment by himself. The next day a strange man named Paul (Mark Gatiss) appears claiming to be Anne’s husband. Anthony doesn’t know who he is and when he mentions France, Paul has no idea what he is talking about. He tells Anthony that the apartment is his and Anne’s and that she is just on her way back home from shopping. When she returns she looks like someone else and he, at first, doesn’t recognize her. She hands a bag of chicken to her husband and he leaves to go dress it in the kitchen. Anthony starts asking her about Paul and Anne tells him she hasn’t been married since she got divorced and that there is no one else there except for the two of them. When she leaves the room Paul reappears to ask him why he is being such a burden to everyone. The entire sequence is brilliantly portrayed in real time and to Anthony these contradictions occur minutes or even seconds apart. These sorts of moments happen frequently throughout the film and there is a sense of passing in and out of different realities that leaves Anthony feeling confused and vulnerable. There are days when Paul is there, who now also looks like someone else (Rufus Sewell); and some days he doesn’t exist at all.
Anthony takes a liking to Laura (Imogen Poots), a home health aide hired by Anne. She strikingly resembles his other daughter Lucy whom he hasn’t seen in some time and there are days when Lucy and Laura are indistinguishable. He misses Lucy a lot and wonders when she will stop by again. Her tragic death in a car accident years ago is largely forgotten. His frustration nearly reaches its peak when after gleefully waiting for Laura to come a completely different aide named Catherine (Olivia Williams) arrives at the apartment and he is told Laura had stopped working for them awhile ago.
I could go on, but it is best to see the film than read about it. Anthony’s story develops along to a climax that is heartbreaking and an exemplar of some of the finest acting I’ve seen in recent cinema.

Anthony Hopkins’ performance earned him his second acting Oscar following his 1991 win for The Silence of the Lambs and it is well-deserved. He goes through every possible emotion on the spectrum, each time doing it with care and subtlety. While he goes from impotent rage to laughter to childlike weeping for his mother it’s all performed as if I was witnessing a real person struggling with dementia.
The film is supported by a minimal cast all of which give performances resembling real people acting as people really do. Contrasts between the sympathetic, annoyed, and overwhelmed are deftly portrayed without aggressive pathos. The directing shows a highly reflective familiarity with human behavior.
The movie is set primarily in a singular setting inside the apartment where Florian Zeller maintains a simple structure in showing each passing day while crafting these skillful and complicated scenes where Anthony’s reality seems to shift in real time. It’s an exceptionally directed picture, impressive in that this is Zeller’s film debut. His knowledge of stagecraft is perfectly translated to film showcasing undeniable talent for direction and introspective writing.

Throughout The Father I was overwhelmed by how kindly its realism is. There is not an ounce of preachiness or sentimentality to the picture and, yet, it doesn’t become raw or cynical in its approach. There is a genuine compassion and kindliness in its writing that cannot be faked. Without being overly cheerful or nihilistic, not a single moment rings false or hollow. Hopkins’ portrait of a man struggling to rationalize his increasingly confusing life during the ravages of dementia is sympathetic and emotionally arresting. In the movie’s final scene Hopkins gives a performance that left me in tears. I was taken aback by how committed to honest feeling the movie was without being depressing or uplifting. Zeller’s screenplay goes beyond either sentiment, giving a solid bit of still-life that didn’t tell me how to feel. The film’s emotions come naturally to the viewer without contrivance or manipulation. When I watched The Father I saw real people, with real feelings, saying real things. And hanging over me the whole time was pure compassion, unadulterated by well-intended lies and triteness.

The Father is the kind of story that an author like Mitch Albom would render toothless with saccharine melodrama or a director like Sidney Lumet would elevate to nigh Shakespearean elegy. Florian Zeller meets us somewhere in the middle where simple empathy doesn’t take the sting out of sorrow, but gives it something we can relate to and find meaning in on our own. The Father is not a profound movie. It’s a deeply human one.

Breathless (1960)

Rating 3.5/4

“After all I am an asshole,” says Michel introducing himself. He speaks with resignation and without apology. The world has reached its verdict about him and he doesn’t disagree. And why shouldn’t he? Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a thoroughly selfish and unlikable individual and cannot see himself being anything else. He steals cars, objectifies women, robs people in public restrooms, and mistreats everyone.
Michel idolizes Humphrey Bogart and plays it cool: wearing sunglasses indoors and rarely goes without a cigarette in his mouth. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Belmondo became an instant icon of the French New Wave bringing classic Hollywood cool to young French audiences of the 60s.
He is in love with Patricia (Jean Seberg) an American girl who is rebelling against the expectations of society in her own way. She is smart and independent, but doesn’t seem to like it much. She confides in a friend that she is uncomfortable with her freedom and we see her become unhealthily drawn to Michel’s rude and narcissistic exterior. He tells her he knows he loves her because he wants to sleep with her. She knows this is nonsense, but lets it slide because she wants to sleep with him too. She quotes Faulkner at him, “between grief and nothing I will take grief.” Michel rejects this calling grief a compromise and says he wants all or nothing. In the end we see which of the two he receives.
In a lengthy bedroom scene Patricia’s every attempt to culture and civilize him is rebuffed by his apathy and he constantly interrupts any serious conversation by asking her to take her clothes off. Eventually she says to him, “We look each other in the eyes and I don’t know why.” Michel provides her excitement and not much else.

In the film’s opening Michel steals a car and goes for a ride. He monologues, occasionally looking at the camera toward the audience; and here we get our first clear look at his character. He expresses a number of harsh opinions about anything that is not remotely on his wavelength, refuses to pick up a pair of female hitchers because he thinks they are not attractive enough, and plays with a gun he finds in the glovebox as if it was a toy.
He is stopped by a policeman but gets away when the officer is killed. We don’t see Michel commit the crime. In a series of jump cuts a gunshot is heard, the policeman collapses, and Michel is then seen running away on foot. In Paris he drags Patricia into the mess as he tries desperately seeking men who owe him money so he can fund passage to Italy for himself and her. He steals a few more cars, beats up man in a restroom for the cash in his pocket, and cheats a taxi driver out of his fare. Patricia protects him by lying to investigators who are looking for him.

I am uncertain that Michel is guilty of the crime he is being accused of. The movie spends plenty of time after the murder showing us that even if he hadn’t he is certainly capable of it. After all, he is an asshole as he said himself. Every heinous and reprehensible act he commits is depicted clearly accept for the murder. For society and even Michel himself it doesn’t really matter. Society made its judgments. He is just as aware of his shortcomings as anyone. He just doesn’t care. It’s all the same when the world already hates him whether he did it or not. What he does after the murder won’t be any different no matter what his guilt. In the end his only feelings are of exhaustion and disgust.

Breathless takes a unique approach to its cinematography using custom film in a handheld camera that presents a distinctly documentarian look. The camera is never still for a moment, subtly moving even during still shots like in many of Scorsese’s films.
The scenes of dialogue are subjected to frequent jump cuts, sometimes between every line. Time lapses happen between the characters’ statements even when the next line directly follows the previous one. This was a last minute editorial decision made in post-production and it has been widely debated by viewers for decades. My own interpretation is that the time in which these conversations take place are being deliberately made unimportant by Godard. Different times, same conversation. Michel has given the same pillow talk and used the same lines to seduce women on multiple occasions. He is after all, an asshole.

Breathless – released in France as À bout de souffle – has become immensely popular among young theater goers since its release in 1960. There is a reason for this. It’s rough, raw, and hideously brazen in its honesty. The universe doesn’t blare trumpets declaring objectively that one person or the next is bad or good. People can only see their behavior whatever it may be and make their own judgments. Michel and Patricia are loathsome to many. Either for being unidentifiable or hitting too close to home. Michel is cool, but also a jerk with deep-seated insecurities and completely devoid of empathy or remorse. Patricia is infuriating. She’s beautiful. She’s clever. And every choice she makes is terrible and costs her more and more of her dignity and self-respect. She’s neither a feminist icon nor a stand-in for misogynistic ideals. She is wholly herself for better or worse.

I don’t like anyone in this movie. I don’t like what happens in this movie. Listening to Michel’s putdowns and enduring his selfish attitude is difficult at times. But people like him do exist. And Godard masterfully gives us a realistic and uncomfortable look at them without awkward moralizing or offensive apathy. I didn’t have fun watching the film. I wasn’t supposed to. And that’s what makes it a masterpiece.