2023-05-14 14:00:00
Luck favors the brave. If they’re crazy talented, there’s planetary alignment in the air. With panache and genius to spare, playwright Florian Zeller ticks both boxes. When he decided to adapt his successful play The Father (three Molières, in 2012, and an international triumph), the image of Anthony Hopkins imposed itself on him: “ I have an extreme admiration for him, and I was convinced that he would be extraordinary in this role. So I wrote the screenplay with him in mind. That’s why the main character is called Anthony. Once the script was finished, in English therefore, all that remained was to have Sir Anthony read it. Will he agree to play this octogenarian suffering from senile dementia, whose film follows, through his confused gaze, the disorientation, the panic fears, the paranoid outbursts of anger, in a word, the shipwreck of old age, when the Alzheimer’s disease takes hold of the old? Zeller sends the script to his agent, like a bottle in the sea.
The actor wants to meet him. He hops on a plane to Los Angeles. Handshake, good vibes, hugs: the film will be made. Hopkins, who was “overwhelmed by the script”, but who is committed to a project, asks the Frenchman, without really believing it, to wait for him… “I knew immediately that Florian’s film would be one of the best of my career”, explains the actor who, twenty-nine years following his Academy Award for the role of Hannibal Lecter, in Thesilenceofthelambs, will receive, at 83, a second golden statuette. For his part, Florian Zeller won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
VIRTUOSO DIRECTION
On the set, Hopkins is amazed by this novice, who offers him, icing on the cake, to give the answer to the talented Olivia Colman (Queen Elizabeth II, seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown), who plays his daughter. The duo excels. Hopkins does not play, he is Anthony, this old man whose distress grips our throats and in whom many spectators will recognize a relative. According to Zeller: Theater and cinema exist to share common emotions, to remind us that we are part of a whole, of humanity. “And to explain:” I experienced this feeling of helplessness and desolation in the face of the disease. I understood that love is not always enough. His words are accurate and his staging is virtuoso.
Deliberately, she blurs the cards, brings in several actors for the same role, upsets the sets, the places, to convey Anthony’s confusion and loss of bearings. Hopkins drew extreme emotions from him in order to feed this mirror role in many ways, since it is a film that questions the life that passes and the end that is approaching…” I remembered my father’s death a lot, confesses the interpreter who, infinitely grateful, adds: This film is different. It’s the best thing that has happened to me in my professional life. » During the final scene, who can say if the emotion that electrifies the screen is that of Anthony or that of Hopkins?
The Father, Sunday May 14 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2
JULIAN BARCILON
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