REALLY CONFUSING?? AND NO MENTION OF COVID!
(sigh) I was all set to enjoy this Best Picture nominee that stars two of the most prominent actors in Hollywood (and England) but, along with my elderly moviegoer Helen, seemed very disturbed by what we saw on screen. The story, if you can call it one, is erratic and all over the place. And scary. We had nightmares after finishing it.
Anthony Hopkins plays a very boorish and snobby old man, father to Olivia Colman who right away comes off as a commanding and crass dictator. He screams at his daughter when she questions why he fired the last nurse. "She stole my watch!" It's clear this was a misunderstanding, as he eventually finds it two minutes later. In the next scene, Hopkins barges in on a stranger in his house, who claims to be his daughter's husband. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW!!" Hopkins barks. The husband appears confused, and then a bit aggravated. "I'll call Ann now", he says.
Helen whispered to me "I think he has Alzheimer's disease". But I whispered back loudly "No one is that stupid! The man is an idiot! SHE has the disease!" By now we were being audibly hushed by a very snooty art house crowd, who no doubt worshipped these two actors to the point that one woman turned to me midway and said "The only idiots in this movie are YOU two who Clearly have Stupidity Syndrome."
Okay so if Anthony Hopkins is suffering from dementia or what ever, why is he shacked up with his sister's husband? He seems rich enough to afford to be in a nursing home. OH WAIT. It has to be called a RETIREMENT community. Helen and I rolled our eyes. This story has been done so many times before, including in HBO's The Sopranos when Tony's mother needed to be put away for being a nut case. Why this is being taken so seriously for awards contention is beyond belief. Helen, now 75, has had relatives who suffered these conditions. At one point, Hopkins invites this younger woman to be his caretaker (or does Colman?) Hopkins flirts with her, then says he likes to laugh, then accuses Colman of wanting to inherit the flat HE owns. HUH?
Suddenly the tone switches and Olivia Colman is acting like SHE has dementia. Anthony Hopkins mentions that Olivia is going to move to Paris, as she mentions earlier on. "No I'm not, when did I say that?" Helen and I got really irritated now. SHE DID SO MENTION SHE WAS GOING to Paris to live with her boyfriend! Now she's NOT? So is she crazy, or is she acting like a Libra and being indecisive about her life choices? Her husband, also, is a real rude man. Not nice to Hopkins at all.
The story is all over the place and we kept trying to figure out if this was like Memento (2001)- where Guy Pearce has memory loss. The editing is strange. There's a scene where Hopkins overhears his daughter and her husband discuss putting him in a nursing home and the nurse won't work out. Hopkins joins them then for dinner, interrupting - then leaves, and we see the SAME scene played out again! I felt I was getting Alzheimer's myself.
Back to Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman. He goes back and forth with his memory, and so does she - sometimes he recognizes his family, and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes she seems OK, sometimes she doesn't. There's also random switches to Hopkins being cared for by ANOTHER woman. Older, maybe his elderly sister, wife, daughter? We couldn't pin point it. But he is not likable. Colman should have moved to Paris right away instead of sticking around. Where were the doctors? "Oh, the doctors! Not when they're a bunch of contemporary Victorians" (Kidman, The Hours- as Virginia Woolf would say).
Does the UK have a worse health system than the United States? Also NO mention of Coronavirus at all. Why wasn't Olivia wearing a mask when she was outside coming back in the home? Social distancing is very important. Unless we are to assume they all have been lucky enough to have gotten Moderna's potent two-jab vaccine.
The Father is essentially a power control movie. Even without his disease, it's clear Anthony Hopkins wants his daughter all to himself, and also is a squatter- if this indeed isn't his home, he needs to either pay some rent or get the hell out. London is not cheap. If Olivia Colman is the culprit, this screenplay is too tricky for the average movie goer.
We left the film midway anyways because the ushers told us we were being too loud. The audience seemed to clap more for us then they did for the actors on screen. We YouTubed Hopkin's "big moment" when we got home, but by then Helen had already started Nomadland with Frances McDormand, and we had forgotten all about this grumpy old man who has a spineless daughter. The father-daughter abuse relationship has been done since the 1930s. There is nothing inspiring about this picture.
FINAL GRADE: C for Confusing! (Great Acting)