The Father

Small film, yet great. Within the first few minutes, The Father grabbed my attention perfectly due to its dynamic script, fast pace, and strong acting performances. Plus, I have to say that it was like an emotional rollercoaster ride that will leave you with goosebumps in the end. The spiral narrative ingeniously plays with the supporting characters and the perception of time and space. In addition, we experience its growing confusion and frustration with the main protagonist. Anthony Hopkins is at his best here. Everything he does and he feels is endlessly believable, and you forget that you are watching an actor. It was a force to be reckoned with, and it touched me like nothing else. (04/02/2021)

An incredibly fresh cinematic probe into the issue of old age and the slow decline of both the physical and primarily the psychological that is uniquely turned around and dissected in detail from the perspective of the patient, not the people around them, so we don’t get any corny tearful scenes or any other similar mining of emotions. Zeller goes about it in a sophisticated, at times almost detective-like manner, and the phenomenal performance of Anthony Hopkins doesn't give the viewer a chance to breathe. Within the genre, an unusual atypical film that is worth seeing, although it is not an easy watch. (04/25/2021)

The unbearable lightness of acting. I remember well Hopkins's exclusive interview with Reflex, where he said that "...acting is the easiest profession in the world...". So Sir Anthony cut yet another theatrical role, the likes of which he has portrayed hundreds of in his lifetime on stages, and he still won an Oscar for it, by the way. Yeah, acting is a beautiful profession, if you know how to do it. (05/07/2021)

Anthony Hopkins is definitely not an old hand yet, as he convinced me with his breathtaking performance in The Father. The film manages to evoke the mental state of a man who is slowly but surely being consumed by a serious illness, robbing him of his memories and overall awareness of himself. At first I found myself actually similarly confused as Anthony, then I found myself sympathizing with both him and the people around him – especially his daughter Anne. It was incredibly sad to see what Alzheimer's disease, which befalls many of us when we live to such an old age, can do to a person. The Father is mainly an acting tour-de-force by Hopkins, but the supporting cast also gave supremely convincing performances, giving rise to an intimate but all the more powerful slice-of-life film. Old age can be peaceful, but it can also be cruel! (04/13/2021)

The exact opposite of what I expected from a screening of "an Oscar-winning film about a man with dementia". No obligatory ticking off of touching or disturbing points of the classic storyline, but rather an unpleasant, visually very modest, yet suffocatingly tight one-man show by Anthony Hopkins, without exaggeration the best performance of his career. The precisely cast supporting roles do not diminish his dominance; on the contrary, they help him shine even brighter. I can't give the highest rating purely for subjective reasons, because when I imagine that this awaits me with my own parent at some point, I have a little trouble even taking a breath. (04/12/2021)