Director and playwright Florian Zeller takes viewers down a rabbit hole that mirrors the confusion of Anthony Hopkins’ character as dementia takes its toll.
Anthony Hopkins plays a man struggling with dementia in The Father. Sony Pictures
One rarely hears the adjective “Pinteresque” any more but it came surging to mind as I watched The Father. The edginess of Harold Pinter’s plays owed much to the way he incorporated elements of the Theatre of the Absurd (to use Martin Esslin’s well-known term), without ever losing touch with plausible reality.
In adapting his own play in collaboration with Christopher Hampton, director Florian Zeller provides many moments when we feel as if we’ve fallen down a rabbit hole without noticing, even though almost every scene takes place within a single London apartment.
