#imogenpoots

*contains spoilers*

Based on the world-renowned and re-enacted stage play of the same name by French writer and first-time director Florian Zeller, ‘The Father’ is a very personal portrayal of a very universal experience. Not only is it a masterclass in acting by legendary Welshman Sir Anthony Hopkins, even more importantly than that, it’s an intimate and powerful portrait of a man’s life in the throes of dementia.

These days there is an emphasis on embracing ageing and the wisdom, life experiences and insights that come from a long life. For a lot of people, however, ageing gracefully isn’t an option, and instead of shuffling off this mortal coil with memories of a life well lived and their dignity and humanity intact, they have to struggle and fight their way out.

Most of us of know something about or someone with dementia or Alzheimer's and can quite easily substitute Hopkins’ character for one of our own loved ones, but the poignancy in the performance doesn’t rely on prior knowledge. We know how hard it is for the families but we don’t think about it enough from the sufferer’s point of view. ‘The Father’ puts Anthony’s upsetting, chaotic and confusing frame of mind front and centre.

Hopkins is a powerhouse, that we know, but when you think that he won his first Oscar playing the terrifyingly magnetic and metallic tongued cannibal Hannibal Lecter in ‘Silence of The Lambs’, and has now just won his second Oscar as the frighteningly forgetful and fragile Anthony in ‘The Father’, his talent and range really does astound. At the age of 83, he is still in his prime and taking on another great role, and arguably his greatest role to date.

Banal moments of everyday life are peppered with sudden shocks and utter bewilderment as Anthony battles to make sense of his confronting new world. His existence may seem small and within the confides of one room or one flat, but his struggle is of earth-shattering proportions. Although dialogue, inner monologues and interactions are often the key cinematic tools used to convey a character’s thoughts and feelings, someone with memory loss doesn’t have the neurological energy or cohesion to explain the confusion inside their heads, so as Anthony’s descent into full blown dementia escalates, the audience is taken with him. Feelings of distress, disorientation, frustration, anger, loneliness, exhaustion, and heart-break increasingly consume Anthony’s every waking hour, and as a viewer, you very quickly begin to share the same sentiments and concerns.

Stylistically, script and production design wise, the film’s psychological roller coaster ride is strongly supported by a physical assault on the senses too. Scenes are repeated with slight variations in dialogue and staging, day becomes night and then suddenly back to day again, rooms are rearranged in the blink of an eye and a revolving door of actors come and go as the same characters. It’s amazing just how claustrophobic it can get inside your own head!

You begin to wonder how many days, weeks, or months the story is being played out over, and was he in the nursing home the whole time or did we chronologically journey from his flat, to Anne’s and then the home? Did the trauma of losing his beloved youngest daughter Lucy to an accident bring on his dementia or was it predisposed? Like the disease that is rapidly ravaging his mind, the movie and the character of Anthony is complex, with emotions that run the gamut from gentle, charming and cooperative to irate, stubborn and paranoid. He was, until very recently, a man of great intelligence and independence, so losing control and purpose understandably rocks him to the core.

His daughter Anne (the always brilliant Olivia Colman and momentarily also played by Olivia Williams) has great love, empathy and patience, but like most carers, there is only so much of her father’s everchanging moods and manners that she can endure. Her husband Paul (a deliberately disjointed joint acting effort by Mark Gatiss and Rufus Sewell) barely hides his insensitivity and implies that Anthony is intentionally burdening them by exaggerating his symptoms. He mainly treats his father-in-law’s condition with contempt and cruelty, and unless it was another lapse in reality, even physically attacks him in one of many harrowing scenes.

And like the supporting cast, ‘The Father’ often has you too paralysed by indecision. No, Anne shouldn’t have to give up her whole life to care for her ill father, however when she eventually does, you resent her for leaving him when he needs her the most. In the traumatic finale, when in a brief moment of clarity, he realises the extent of his condition and circumstance, Anthony cries “I feel as if I’m losing all my leaves”. It’s such a potent and poetic line. He feels vulnerable, exposed, upset, lonely, lost and afraid. It’s impossible to sum up how agonising and isolating it must feel to know you are slowly slipping away, but this goes some way to explain it in the simplest and saddest of terms. And if Hopkins sobbing for his “mummy” doesn’t reduce you to tears then I don’t know what will.

There are brief moments of levity, from Anthony’s obsession with his watch (or lack of it) and Parisian’s not speaking English, to his energetic interactions with his young new carer Laura (Imogen Poots), but I’m not going to lie. When I say the smiles and laughs are brief, I mean just that. Ultimately, ‘The Father’ isn’t a movie that can accommodate a happy ending and it would do a huge disservice to the ethos of the story if it did. The reality of dementia is that it doesn’t get worse before it gets better, it just gets worse. Sufferers slowly and painfully fade away into oblivion and their loved ones have to watch from the sidelines, helpless to do anything about it.

I’ve never cried as many times as I did during and after this screening, but please don’t let that put you off. Although on an emotional level it’s not for the faint of heart, anybody with a heart will feel privileged to have witnessed one of the best performances of Anthony Hopkins’ stellar career and one of the most damaging and demoralising real-life issues affecting our ageing population today.

Whether by design or devastating irony, ‘The Father’ is a movie about forgetting, but for me (and no doubt so many others), it’s a movie I will never forget.

5/5 stars

With such a large selection of movies to take in during my race towards wrapping up 2020, certain factors help me make decisions in regards to which films take priorities over others.  Vivarium ticked several very important boxes while I was doing my research, with suspenseful horror, science-fiction and Jesse Eisenberg especially standing out.  I am certainly glad that I took these markers into consideration, as Vivarium thoroughly impressed me.

Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) are a young couple looking to purchase their first home together.  After a brief and eccentric meeting with real estate agent Martin (Jonathan Aris), the couple is convinced to follow him to Yonder, a new development full of similar looking homes laid out in a labyrinth-like fashion.  Martin shows the couple a home marked No. 9, but disappears before Tom or Gemma are able to talk to him about their decision.  Seemingly stranded in the Yonder neighborhood, the couple tries to drive out, but find themselves stuck in a supposed loop that continuously returns them back to No. 9.  Frustrated and out of gas, the couple opts to stay the night to prepare for an escape on foot the following day, but after finding themselves victim to the same loop, Tom burns the house to the ground.  The couple falls asleep as the house burns, but when they wake up the next morning, not only is the home fully restored, but a baby in a box awaits them with the inclusion of odd, ominous instructions : “Raise the child and be released”.

Vivarium has a strange ability to seem vaguely familiar while also coming off as completely unique, at times reading like an extremely dark and less comical take on Groundhog’s Day, an updated version of the Twilight Zone, or a twisted Truman Show.  The Martin character exhibits a spider and the fly approach, luring his victims unknowingly deeper and deeper into his web until they are snared.  Similar to a spider’s web, Tom and Gemma find themselves pulled deeper in the more they fight the very unnatural events, up to the point that acceptance becomes the only way of coping with an unknown dark fate.  The touches of horror and science-fiction are present, though not heavily pronounced... the “hell is other people” approach runs vibrant throughout the proceedings.  Tom and Gemma do their best to rationalize their circumstances and find a logical approach to escape, but ultimately, find themselves taking shots in the dark at an unknown target.  The human struggle of trying to imprint our humanity onto the unfamiliar is also a vibrant driving force for the narrative.

The madness of repetition, the monotony of the mundane and the dark uncertainty of predetermination create a trident of suspense and psychological terror that not only cages our protagonists, but creates an unease in the viewer.  The pressure is turned higher when the “son” that Tom and Gemma are presented turns out to be a dark, sick cosmic joke in the form of absurdist, off-kilter mockery.  The fear of being put in unknown isolation is also a key, with Tom and Gemma having to result to defending themselves against a literal nothing through a back and forth of trial and error-based primal and routine instincts.  The cherry on top of all of this is the son, who is one of the creepiest cinematic creations to date as his innocent form reveals a psychological monster capable of grotesque divide and conquer games.

The bold, abstractly-styled pastels that adorn Yonder make the tone extremely uneasy, to the point where its painting-like “familiarity” is off-putting.  These pastels are so permeant that it gives the film a very uncanny valley feel, as if the characters are occupying a living and breathing painting.  The voyeuristic cinematography and artistic editing pitch the tension to feverish heights, making the viewer feel just as lost and hopeless as Tom and Gemma.   The score use is minimal, especially in the first half of the film, which not only amplifies the uneasiness of the silent moments, but makes the points where music does invade feel like lightning-charged moments of life.  The strong writing and performances create masterful tone shifts between fearful suspense and existential sadness.

Jesse Eisenberg brings an unfamiliar edge and sharpness to his performance that is normally used for comedy, but is embraced and ramped up to a standoffish, prideful level.  In opposition of this is the curiosity and need to understand presented by Imogen Poots, who has her own sense of brooding darkness the comes from the sly deceptiveness she wrestles for control of.  Senan Jennings uses a controlled and extremely directed still sinisterness that is downright unnerving when used in tandem with the vocal pitching.  Eanna Hardwicke is slightly less effective as an enlarged version of Jennings, largely (no pun intended) due to less post-production trickery usage, but he does use the foundation Jennings provides to continue emitting an aggressively unnerving presence.  Jonathan Aris and his calculated, off-putting behavior set a strong early tone for the absurdness to follow.  

Vivarium leaves its viewers with several unanswered questions. For most of them, that’s the point. Others make you wish you'd seen a little bit more. Altogether, it’s an unsettling horror-thriller that keeps you guessing.

Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) visit a strange real estate agent (Jonathan Aris), who brings them to a new development full of identical-looking suburban houses. In the blink of an eye, he’s gone and no matter how hard they try, the couple cannot find a way out of the neighborhood. Soon after, they receive a baby with instructions: “Raise the child and be released.”

This baby thrust upon Tom and Gemma might look human, but it isn’t. The thing isn’t even trying to pretend like it is either, which makes it doubly disturbing. If it were mimicking a boy and failing, that would mean it’s afraid of being detected, that our protagonists have "won" at least one round. This movie squelches hope. With every passing minute, it pumps dread into the room. The way the boy speaks as it grows older gives you chills. Great performance and casting. It’s learning but in a way that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Its enthusiasm is sort of like a kid’s… but just not. Unfortunately, there’s not much the couple can do about it. They’ve tried everything to leave the infinite expanse of identical homes. If there’s an off-chance that raising/tolerating this little monster will allow them to escape, they have to take it.

You’ll also get goosebumps out of Tom and Gemma when they start disagreeing on how to deal with the boy. In this tiny prison of a world, turning on each other is a death sentence. Unfortunately, their situation is taxing both of their sanities. Everything from the green walls to the astroturf lawn, the pattern of clouds in the sky, artificial-looking (and tasting) food makes you wonder what this is. An experiment? A joke? A zoo? Have they been recruited to fulfill a simple task, or is there more to this story? Some of it is analogous to images we're shown right at the beginning of the film - nature footage that shows truth can be just as skin-crawling as fiction - but the metaphor doesn’t quite line up. On the upside, this means you’re unable to predict exactly what’s next. It also means some will be left scratching their heads. This is quite an elaborate setup. There’s got to be a good reason for whoever it is that’s doing this to choose this approach, right? I say sometimes it isn't so important for every question to be answered. The mystery empowers the dread, fear, and despair Vivarium wants to generate.

Vivarium is weird, creepy, and knows exactly when to call it quits. The picture wraps up exactly at the right moment. The end credits finish rolling but you’re still not over the images you’ve seen. It does a lot with just a few actors, and essentially only one set. (December 20, 2020)

Imogen Poots gifs.