"Why do Ann leave to Paris? They do not even speak English! " - asks 80-year-old Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) sharpened in his London House. During the "Father" (in cinemas from April 15), he repeat this replica more than once - the old people tell the same jokes from the youth to close relatives who already know them by heart.
We are talking about the daughter (Olivia Colman), which is upset that the father drove another nurse - Soon she will have to move to Paris to his new guy, and no one to look after Anthony remaining in London. To the question why he kicked out the nurse, dad replies that she stole his watch, although, of course, they himself put them in his favorite cache and forgot about it. Finally, a cute Laura appears (imported Pats), which seems to like Anthony, he even gets excited in her presence and promises to show how she dances well. Already in these scenes it is clear that all household troubles worth the insoluble drama hung in the air - Anthony has progressive Alzheimer's disease, which he, of course, denies, and needs to help him in addition to His Will.
But the film leads all the heroes on which the troubles about Anthony fell into the background. These characters are even interchangeable and shown only by the eyes of the main character. In some scenes, Ann and her man play other actors, because Anthony is everywhere seeing his dead second daughter in the performance of Olivia Williams (there is a reception, similar to "this vague object of desire" Bunuel, but meaning, of course, is completely different).
Hopkins - an actor already such a level that a long time produces ideas and meanings for works of art. The name of his hero Anthony is not a coincidence. French playwright Florian Zeller sent the actor, whose honor called the main character (they even had a common birthday - December 31, 1937), the scenario of his play, going on stage from 2012, four years ago, and says that if Hopkins refused, he would not make a film in English. Fortunately, Sir agreed.
And thank God, because in the movie old age has always been taken to show with a straight back and dignity that makes death on the screen even attractive, sometimes heroic. Even in the rather tough "love" of Michael Hahek, when the question arises in front of a pair on the verge of death, to suffer further or show mercy, the whole situation around the last gesture of help is solved all with the same straight back. In Zellar, for whom the "Father" became a directed debut, and Hopkins another task - to show how, despite the residues of dignity, which is trying to preserve a person to the very end, he still can not obey the natural laws by which the body and consciousness inevitably Come in decline. Anyone who lived with the elderly relatives knows what despair can bring a close person, so reasonable and strong when he suddenly shows signs of dementia. Reality is distorted, only scattered outbreaks, illogical, from various periods of the past remain from memories. Anthony sees the late daughter (whose perhaps it was not?) And in the final there is a mother with the helplessness of the child, in which turns out due to illness. This is a heartbreaking spectacle, and Hopkins passes through the thin face between the truth and the laws of the drama filigree. As Bett Davis said, old age is not for non-gentle. Hopkins here is actually a direct personification of this stunned wisdom.
Photo: Russian Report