Avis des critiques

It's not fair to recommend The Father without a certain kind of trigger warning: if dementia has been a part of your life, Zeller's film will cut as close as you think it will. But not cruelly so, for once the sobs subside, there is a strange kind of comfort to be found in its understanding.

Stage adaptations have always been a double-edged sword for filmmakers. Skew too close to the source material’s staging, and critics will dismiss your adaptation as “stagey.” Overextend the scope of the script, and you start to lose the intimacy of the original production. The Father’s biggest surprise is not its ability to walk this line unscathed but its innate understanding of where the theatrical and the cinematic intersect. In Zeller’s hands, a few key props and a modular apartment building turn “stagey” into the ultimate compliment.

Zeller offers a textbook example of translating a stage work to the screen in ways that keep the power of the play alive while also using the tools of cinema... [And] while Zeller has assembled a top-flight ensemble (which also includes Imogen Poots as a prospective new nurse), this is, with no hyperbole whatsoever, Hopkins’ show from stem to stern, and he rises to the occasion with a performance that will stand out among a stellar, six-decade-long career.

It’s a lot to keep track of, but the elegant writing and the superb performances actually make it relatively easy to follow the proceedings, even as we’re feeling a visceral empathy for Anthony’s feelings of disorientation and feel as if we’re drowning in a sea of confusion with him.

As grim as the subject is, viewers might expect “The Father” to be a downer. But it’s such a powerful theatrical experience, and such a handsome chamber piece for the combined talents of its accomplished cast, that it’s improbably bracing... Ultimately, [the film] is a paradox: as nuanced as it is bluntly direct, as tough as it is tender.

It’s an intimately scaled drama that manages to be terrifying, unfolding as it does primarily from the unmoored perspective of someone in serious cognitive decline... It is assembled like a puzzle box, its chronology curling in on itself in cunning ways... Masterful and agonizing, "The Father" is a gorgeously crafted film about a doomed arrangement entered into with love, even though it can only end in tragedy.

Let’s be honest: the mainspring of “The Father,” onscreen, is the presence of Hopkins—an actor at the frightening summit of his powers, portraying a man brought pitifully low. The irony is too rare to resist.

"The Father" will affect people in different ways, and the movie remains a somewhat claustrophobic adaptation of the stage play. Yet there have been few better attempts on screen to capture dementia -- both for those trapped within it, and those grappling with how to handle them -- punctuated by a staggering performance from Anthony Hopkins, a brilliant cherry on top of the 83-year-old actor's extraordinary career.

Brilliantly written and acted, Hopkins taps an honesty and vulnerability that, when paired with Zeller’s ingenious writing, gives audiences an authentic experience of losing one's faculties. Struggling with the ambivalence of anger and sadness, Colman’s outstanding performance generates deep empathy, which, peppered by Hopkins’s combination of humor, frustration, and despondency, make for a very real and tragic look at growing old.

At once stupendously effective and profoundly upsetting, “The Father” might be the first movie about dementia to give me actual chills... On its face a simple, uncomfortably familiar story about the heartbreaking mental decline of a beloved parent, [the film] plays with perspective so cleverly that maintaining any kind of emotional distance is impossible.

Zeller, adapting his internationally acclaimed play for the screen, has a meticulous eye and a keen sense of mischief, which doesn’t lighten so much as heighten the implacable tragedy at the heart of this story. The moment-to-moment pleasures of trying to decipher the plot give way to crushing futility; you’re left sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that’s almost too painful to solve.

At times, the film still lags under the weight of its conceit, coming off less like an act of perspectival sympathy than as a trick being played on the audience — to say nothing of all the actorly tricks... The ending, depending on you, may come off as either too neat or appropriately revelatory. But the film’s emotions have a stark, memorable sheen.