Yesterday we had a group seminar where we listened to each other's project ideas, and when i was talking about my research into Alzheimer's Disease, my tutor recommended a film called The Father.
Plot:
It is a 2020 film about a man that is suffering with Alzheimer’s Disease, and refuses his daughters help as he ages.
It follows Anthony’s life through the view of his daughter Anne, who feels like she is losing her father, grieving the loss of him while he is still alive.
This film shows the effects of malignant positioning (mentioned in my last blog post) really well, and how people with AD can feel that ‘healthy’ people around them are trying to trick or manipulate them.
At the start of the film is shows that Anthony’s old carer had quit, and that Anthony thought she was stealing from him. When really he had just forgotten where he had left his watch. This absent watch becomes a recurring manifestation throughout the film of his temporal dislocation.
First scene from The Father (2020), where Anthony thinks his other caregiver was stealing from him
Narrative:
The film offers a subjective experience (in place of an objective story), of what it’s like to suffer from dementia.
The film intentionally obscures reality by planting subtle tricks deep within its nonlinear structure. Production design, editing and even scores are used to contort our perception of time, space and sound; and consequently the film is turned into something like a maze.
The film follows a non linear narrative, but nothing will ever make sense no matter what order you watch/tell the story. It reiterates the film’s primary intent, that the depiction of Anthony’s worsening condition has little to do with the actual chronology of the events, and more to do with the delivery of accurate experience of progressive mental decline.
So by the end scene, everything becomes more disorganised, with the shots becoming more subjective.
The entire film is based on the idea of loops, with the middle scene of the film creating a loop, being the first time in the film we subjectively get hit with the sense of confusion and an acknowledgement of our lack of control over this situation.
First part of the looping scene from The Father (2020), Anthony walks in on Anne and Paul discussing putting him in a home, sits down at table to eat dinner.
Second part of the looping scene from The Father (2020), Anthony leaves the table, the scene repeats, showing Anne and Paul's conversation, and Anthony walking in, but then leaving the room
Camera techniques:
Without obvious first-person camera tricks, it puts us inside Anthony’s head. We see and don’t see what he sees and doesn’t see. We experience the deterioration of Anthony’s condition along with him.
We experience the disorientating time slips and time loops. Scenes are repeated, people morph into other people, the furniture seems to suddenly change, a scene which appeared to follow the previous one sequentially turns out to have preceded it. And new people, who he doesn’t recognise, keep appearing in his flat.
It feels like the universe is gaslighting Anthony with these people.
Scene from The Father (2020), where he finds a man in his flat, but doesn’t know who he is
In the first scene, the camera moves objectively, displaying everything as truthfully as possible, using wide angles to illustrate the characters and their surroundings with visual clarity. Even when there is a noticeable cut, the plot connects smoothly in the following shot.
Anthony’s condition isn’t clear at the start of the film, and us as an audience aren’t even supposed to be aware of his problem yet. Instead, the film gives us the feeling of a slow decline throughout.
By the end of the film, there is a feeling of disconnection between the characters that inhabit the same space, as the camera captures them individually with more medium and close up shots, rather than together in the same wide shot.
The shot compositions of the film are copied again and again. Everything feels repeated and recycled, while none of it actually is; reminding us that life functions in the same way.
Another scene i liked in the film was a scene where Anne accidentally drops a mug, and it smashes on the floor. We can see her picking up the pieces, but ultimately not being able to put it back together. I think you could take this scene as a metaphor for how she sees her life falling apart, and she's trying to keep the pieces of it together.
Or maybe it's even a metaphor for her trying to help her father, trying to fix what is already broken, as his condition deteriorates slowly.
Scene from The Father (2020), Anne drops a mug on the floor.
This film gave me a lot of inspiration for my own project, and it has cemented the idea of basing my own film on a storyline about dementia, i will try to implement the camera and editing techniques used in The Father into my own work.
References:
Bradshaw, P (2021), The Guardian, The Father review – Anthony Hopkins superb in unbearably heartbreaking film, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/10/the-father-review-anthony-hopkins-olivia-colman-florian-zeller (Accessed 4/2/22)
Taylor, M (2021), BFI, The Father is a painfully potent depiction of mental deterioration, Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/father-2020-florian-zeller-anthony-hopkins-mental-deterioration (Accessed 4/2/22)
Spikima Movies (2021), YouTube, The Clever Loop of The Father, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtdsgEC3rQ4 (Accessed 4/2/22)
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