We’re in awards season. It’s a stretched out awards season, but time has become meaningless lately, what with Covid, vaccination roll-outs, pay freezes for three years, and the ordinary hum-drum of too much work and too little time to do it in. Speaking of time, why not spend two or three hours in the cinema, alone or with loved ones, and lose yourself in another world? And speaking of time, what better movie to see than The Father (in cinemas everywhere).
The Father is the film that won Anthony Hopkins the Oscar for Best Actor that was supposed to go to the late Chadwick Boseman. You may remember the sudden anticlimactic ending of the Oscar’s broadcast when Joaquin Phoenix got all philosophical, opened the envelope, did not announce Chadwick Boseman, and rolled the credits. Anthony Hopkins was the not-Chadwick-Boseman name he read out to a stunned and silent audience (which I thought was actually quite rude to Anthony Hopkins who, like all the other nominees in that category, turned in a brilliant, Oscar-worthy performance).
The Father tells a story of dementia, from the sufferer’s point of view. If any reader has a family member with dementia, this film could well be triggering, but it will also be enlightening. It is about time and identity. I learned that dementia is destabilising. It is as though the world is always gaslighting you. You forget, for example, that your daughter has died, and when a so-called friend tells you this, you end up grieving all over again, or putting on a brave face to make everyone think you knew that and there’s nothing to see here, while you internalise fresh grief and the shame of not remembering. My own experience of aged relations with dementia was to watch my great grandmother chatting away with her sister, who died decades earlier, at the foot of her bed. I watched not knowing whether to play along and say how nice to see you again, great aunt Lil, or to tell my great grandmother there’s no one there. After watching The Father, I’m still not sure how I would resolve that dilemma, but I have a greater awareness of how the world looked to my great grandmother. I must warn you, the last scene of The Father, the last words Hopkins speaks, are utterly heartbreaking. With tears flowing down my cheeks, I could not leave my seat until the last credit rolled.
Nomadland, another Oscar winner, is another film that will leave you in your seat until the credits roll. It tells the story of a tribe hiding in plain sight in the United States. It is about people of retirement age who for various reasons are left without income or assets, who travel the United States in RVs and cars, looking for seasonal work. It is the story of our times, of wealth, gender, and racial inequality. The film was made when its director Chloe Zhao, Frances McDormand, its lead actor and a producer, and some crew including Wolf Snyder, production sound mixer, actually lived the life by travelling around the American West in an RV, meeting the real people who live this life, many of whom are in the film. The film has a plot, but is also a documentary with a sharp social conscience. It is filmed in a straightforward, unfussy manner, much like its subjects. You can feel the landscape at dusk. You are touched by the authenticity of the stories told by the non-actors. In one scene, McDormand recites Shakespeare to a young drifter who is visibly engaged by it. The scene has really nothing to do with the film, but it feels so right because it is so authentic. This is a film that is important for its silence too. I’ve often said that sound ruined films. They haven’t been the same since about 1929. But in this film, sound, and its absence, is significant. You can hear the background noises in a room, and out in the open – distant trains and highways, insects, chatty birds roosting for the night, bonfires crackling in the background. The film feels no need to fill the silence. This was the idea of Wolf Snyder, the sound mixer, an idea enthusiastically welcomed by Chloe Zhao, and it gives the film a feeling of real depth.
Wolf killed himself in March this year. He was 36. He is the reason Frances McDormand howled like a wolf when she accepted the Oscar that Nomadland won for Best Picture.
Finally, the clunker. Six Minutes to Midnight could have been such a good film. Judi Dench. Eddie Izzard. A kernel of reality. Six Minutes is based on a real school, Victoria Augusta College, that existed in England between 1932 and 1939. The school educated the daughters of high-ranking German officials. It was essentially a finishing school for Nazi girls. Heinrich Himmler’s goddaughter was a student there. So was Joachim von Ribbentrop’s daughter. We are never told exactly who these girls were in the film, however, because to do so would explode a hole in an already very hole-y poorly executed plot that could not be overcome by suspending our disbelief. Nor can I tell you the plot, tempted though I am because you are unlikely ever to see this film. To do so would spoil what little enjoyment you could ever hope to extract from these very long 99 minutes. Nevertheless I enjoyed watching Judi Dench awkwardly Heil Hitler. She looked very uncomfortable. I also enjoyed watching Eddie Izzard run a lot. Running 43 marathons in 51 days in 2009 for Sport Relief paid off! I’m not sure why all the characters in this film, not just Eddie, are always filmed running uphill to get to a beach, but, well, it’s that kind of film.
It’s just best to avoid this one, in cinemas everywhere.