Some movies touch you, but Father was devastating. For some time, I was speechless - as credits rolled, I closed my eyes and was listening to the background score and I could only see Anthony Hopkins crying in the last scene in front of me.
Equally touching was the role played by Olivia
Coleman as the daughter as she plays the role of a daughter seeing his father in
a state of complete confusion and loss because of his losing memory.
Especially touching is the scene when she leaves
him at a care-giving home and goes to Paris.
All this from a first-time director who had experience
it firsthand from her grandmother who was suffering from dementia when he
stayed with her. His experience led him to write the play which was very successful.
As I write this, I read about Anthony Hopkins winning an OSCAR.
2 yrs back when my father had a relapse of lung
cancer and I started looking after him. Feeding him, bathing him, cutting his
hair. As days passed the energetic Air Force man who used to walk for an hour shrunk
and lay on his bed, then his voice went and when he would try to speak only air
would swoosh out – his frustration in not able to speak and the pain he felt
just to speak a few words or sip a drop of water – the images kept me awake,
came in front of me when I was in a flight or I would wake up at night when I
was sleeping.
If there
ever is Father 2 – it should be about Anne.
Some
interesting article on making of Father.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-the-father-explored-the-painful-descent-into-dementia
