The Father
PG-13; Drama, Thriller
Director: Florian Zeller
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Ayesha Dharker
Rating: ****

French playwright turned director, Florian Zeller’s The Father, adapted from his own play and co-written with Christopher Hampton, is a film that highlights the cognitive and functional issues dementia patients face. Beautifully elucidated through the deteriorating mental state of its principal character, The Father aka Anthony (Anthony Hopkins). The film puts its audience through a series of experiences that opens the layman’s eye to the reality of mental illness, the innate existential struggles of the patient and the trauma of the principal caregiver who in this case happens to be his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman).