From afar, The Father looks like a pleasing bit of Oscar bait, an intimate family drama that allows a few of the best actors in the world to flex their muscles and nothing more, the sort of film you watch during Oscar season and never think of again once the show finishes.
Sit down and actually watch it, however, and you’ll find a genuine masterpiece, a psychological thriller disguised as drama that forces its viewer to live in the mind of a man with dementia and experience the same fear, confusion and despair that plagues those whose minds are failing them late in life.
As great as its performances are, featuring a deeply affecting turn from the great Anthony Hopkins, in his best ever, and a matching one from Olivia Colman, it’s the direction and script from Florian Zeller that are the secret weapon of the film, never wasting single word along with an impressively visual sense of storytelling, turning an apartment into something of the Other, allowing you to get your bearings and then lose them again and again as the rooms subtly change in a Kubrickian trick to unnerve you in ways your unconscious clocks long before your conscious mind does.
Read our full breakdown of the Best Picture nominees here.
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