Director/playwright Florian Zeller’s The Father (2020) is an emotionally harrowing experience, thanks both to Anthony Hopkins’ superbly nuanced, Oscar-winning performance, and a clever non-liner narrative that mirrors the title character’s tragic slide into dementia.
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| They look happy, but that's misleading; Peter (Hugh Jackman, right) and Kate (Laura Dern) are beginning to realize that their teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) has some serious problems. |
For the most part, the actors can’t be faulted; Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby do solid work, and Hopkins is mesmerizing in a fleeting cameo.
Zen McGrath’s handling of this film’s title character is one weak link; he simply isn’t credible as a teenager struggling with mental illness.
But McGrath isn’t entirely to blame, because he hasn’t been granted sufficiently persuasive material. Scripter Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Zeller’s stage play frequently feels contrived; the scenario and sequence of events lack credibility.
Peter Miller (Jackman), a high-profile Manhattan attorney with his eyes on a prize career shift to Washington, D.C., has been settling comfortably into life with new partner Beth (Kirby) and their infant son. The story begins with the unexpected arrival of his agitated ex-wife, Kate (Dern), and her revelation that their 17-year-old son, Nicholas (McGrath), hasn’t been to school for a month.
He has pretended to go, leaving her home each weekday morning with what she’d expect to see, in terms of books and other materials; and he has returned at the appropriate time each afternoon. But school officials finally exposed the charade, and Kate has no idea what Nicholas actually has been doing.
Nor does Nicholas offer any sort of defense. He simply insists that he “can’t stay” with his mother any longer, and would prefer to live with his father, Beth and his baby brother.
Beth isn’t thrilled; her expression makes this obvious. But she doesn’t object; she recognizes the importance of a father/son bond, and she clearly wants her relationship with Peter to succeed. Beth never states any of this in so many words, but it’s clear from Kirby’s delicate, quietly shaded performance.
(Although Kirby has been quite busy since, she remains well remembered as Princess Margaret, in television’s The Crown.)
At first blush, this new situation seems comfortable, although Peter chooses — rather too rapidly — to chalk up Nicholas’ prior odd actions as teenage angst and acting out. Kate, still worried, becomes a more frequent presence; it’s easy to assume that Nicholas’ behavior actually is a means of reuniting “his family.”
To a point, we can forgive Peter’s failure to examine this dynamic more closely, because he has too much on his plate: placating Beth’s rising anxiety, and trying to spend quality time with their infant son; attempting to re-bond with Nicholas; being sensitive to Kate’s fretfulness (the divorce apparently was amicable); and not letting any of this interfere with his career.
He isn’t entirely successful. Jackman’s features become more grim, more dour, more rigidly controlled: clearly a man in over his head.
Even so, it becomes impossible to accept his bland failure to clock the significance of Nicholas’ self-destructive behavior and disturbing references to suicide. And, ultimately, the contrivances become unacceptable. Neither Peter nor Kate checks to be sure that Nicholas is attending his new school; that’s absolutely ludicrous. Their unwillingness to seek qualified professional help also is a stretch.
The story’s increasingly awkwardness is fueled further by Zeller’s failure to get a convincing performance from McGrath, whose stiff delivery often looks and sounds like a wannabe actor giving an unsuccessful cold reading.
Dern puts heart and soul into Kate’s despair. Her eyes also have an occasional glimmer of hope: a sense that she, too, wishes things could be the way they were when Nicholas was younger. (More than once, I wondered why their marriage broke up; Zeller and Hampton offer no clues.)
The situation becomes somewhat more intriguing when Peter visits his own father (Hopkins), who — in one quick scene — is revealed as a sadistic, unapologetic bully who obviously made Peter’s childhood absolute hell. The ferocity of Hopkins’ snide, disdainful little speech intensifies when, after scorching the earth, he settles back with a smug, satisfied smile.
Absolutely chilling.
At this point — if not sooner — we begin to wonder which son deserves this film’s title. I favor Peter, because Jackman is so persuasive at depicting a man desperate to be a better father than the one he grew up with, and terrified of falling short.
McGrath simply doesn’t radiate mental illness. Nicholas isn’t sufficiently crafty, manipulative, despairing or unstuck; he also lacks the heightened presence that should make people uneasy when he enters a room.
The result is unsatisfying, which also renders the story’s inevitable conclusion rather anticlimactic. Whether any of these characters achieves greater self-awareness, remains an open question.
One wonders what Zeller will do next. The Mother? The Daughter?
Hold me back…
2 comments:
Obviously, Zeller's next film will be The Holy Ghost.
Now, why didn't I think of that???
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