"I'll take The Fat Her for $200, Alex." (Patreon)

Haven't been posting brief thoughts on W/Os lately—most of them aren't worth addressing, frankly, especially since few of you will have seen the ND/NF titles—but since The Father is one of 2020's big award magnets, and at least one of my friends flipped for it, let me quickly explain why I felt like I'd seen enough after half an hour. (To the extent that this movie can be spoiled, I will be doing so; stop reading now if you plan to see it and would like to experience some initial disorientation in the way that the filmmakers intended.) Three reasons, basically:

1. This is a gimmick film, of sorts, and there didn't seem, 32 minutes in, to be much to it beyond that gimmick. Perhaps I'd have felt differently had I not known in advance that the title character suffers from dementia, and hence had a sustained WTF reaction at the outset (though see #3 below). Having inadvertently gleaned that via Twitter, however, I very quickly "got" what the film is doing, and then gradually lost interest as it just kept on doing that with additional permutations. On top of which, the opening credits informed me that Zeller adapted the film from his own stage play, which made it pretty clear how things would likely progress—once Olivia Williams appeared as Anne, I could guess future wrinkles (subsequently confirmed by the Wikipedia synopsis), as that's just the most logical theatrical ploy. 

2. Speaking of which, while I appreciate that Zeller's trying to convey what dementia actually feels like from within, that particular approach bugged me. It's as if a movie tried to convey how I see color by swapping red and green, with red grass and green fire trucks. That's not how it works. (Would look equally bizarre to me. Or nearly so, anyway.) Anthony doesn't look at Anne and see someone else's face; he looks at Anne's face and doesn't recognize it. Yes, the former's meant to visually suggest the latter, but it's just too cute for my taste, at least when serving as a movie's entire structural basis. Likewise, though to a lesser degree, the conceit of showing us people who aren't actually there, as a means of placing us inside a mind that's gone chronologically adrift. Because...

3. ...at that point, The Father might as well be a movie about someone trapped in a dream state, who keeps mistakenly thinking that he's finally awoken only to see the world inexplicably shift on him yet again. While that's perhaps an apt description of dementia, it's not a movie I'd likely tolerate for long; once it's clear that nothing we see can ever be trusted as real, there's no longer anything "at stake." (I hate that phrase but can't immediately think of a better one.) I gather that it's eventually possible to work out The Father's true circumstances to at least some degree, and certainly I was on top of stuff like Colman looking subtly pained every time Anthony mentions his other daughter. But those reveals didn't seem worth sticking around for. Basically, I just wasn't enthused about watching another hour of Hopkins being magisterially bewildered/frightened. (His performance in the first 32 minutes seemed fine, saw nothing that I wouldn't expect from him in this role.) There didn't even seem to be much hope of ever leaving that apartment.

So I moved on to The Climb, which I likewise bailed on after half an hour. Don't really have anything of interest to say about that one, though. You need to find the dynamic between the two leads funny (or at least something other than intensely annoying), and I did not. Started to look a little more interesting when Gayle Rankin shows up in chapter III, but still not nearly interesting enough.