The Father

Anthony's (Anthony Hopkins) a prisoner of his own mind. Dementia has hit and it's taken hold. He can't live alone anymore after a row with his last caretaker and now he's staying with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman). Everyday, every hour, every minute is a challenge when you don't recognise or remember anymore. A new caretaker has arrived called Laura (Imogen Poots). She seems familiar but he doesn't know why. Anne is moving to Paris soon and he's worried. What's happening to him? Why is it happening to him? How did he get here? Where will he end up?

What's the scariest movie you've seen in the past year or so? Was it Elisabeth Moss being menaced by The Invisible Man? Lonely island shenanigans in The Lighthouse or the housebound horrors of Relic? Maybe it was the truly petrifying final scene of Hunter Hunter that did you in or the creatures of the Russian sci-fi horror Sputnik or a very unhinged Russell Crowe in....er...Unhinged. Or maybe it was a small, intimate tale of an old man losing his mind that did you in. Yup, the big money's on the last one.

The Father is devastating. The kind of watch that will linger with you for days. It's brutal, unforgiving, genuinely frightening. A glimpse into a future many of us are facing, a glimpse into a present that many people are dealing with right now. Imagine watching your hero (if you are fortunate enough), the person who raised you from a pup, on a downhill slide as you stand there unable to help them. It's nature at it's cruelest and it's what makes this such a profoundly upsetting 90 minutes. Director Florian Zeller takes that primal fear that lingers at the back of every mind and let's us see it from it's own point of view. He messes with our sense of time and place. Scenes begin at the end and loop back on themselves. Faces and names flip and spin. What you've been led to believe is nonsense and what you thought you heard didn't happen. It's unnerving and disorientating and that's only for us watching. Imagine having to live it.

It's cleverly done but not in a cutesy way. There's nothing fun remotely happening here. It lets you empathise with Anthony, puts you in his shoes and Hopkin's portrayal of a man being betrayed by his own mind will floor you. Once near the very end, his performance lapses into ACTING but throughout it all feels so real. By turns angry, suspicious, childlike, charming, confused, clinging to his pride for dear life and losing the battle. He's immense. Olivia Colman though, and that face of hers, striving for stoicism and failing, all that turmoil beneath the surface she wants to hide from her Da, it's killing her and the thought of not being able to care for him .... well it's almost too much to bear. It's much less showy than her Oscar winning work on The Favourite and all the better for it. A simple scene of her crossing a courtyard just brims with unspoken anguish.

The Father is streaming online now. It's the best film about the terrors of old age since Michael Haneke's Amour in 2012. I can't think of any higher praise for it. Watch it. But be prepared to hurt after it.