The Father at Curzon Richmond was superb

I like watching films but am not much of a cinema fan (for reasons that probably make no sense) and am usually happy to wait for them to hit the small screen so it takes something special to drag me out. The Father was certainly special enough to do that.

My primary interest was in the story and the story teller. I had seen the play at Richmond Theatre in 2016 and that had led me to see other Florian Zeller plays subsequently. If any further temptation was needed then the promise of an Oscar winning performance from Anthony Hopkins was more than enough.

It was towards the end of the run at Curzon Richmond before I got organised enough to book and so I found myself going at 8:30pm on a Friday evening.

A pleasant upside of that timing was the opportunity to make a first return visit to Wagamama for a year where a vegan Tofu Firecracker was exceptional. I also had time for a pint in The Olde Ship which was useful after the Firecracker.

This was only my second visit to Curzon Richmond and I had forgotten that I could get a real coffee  to take in, which was a much better option than another beer.

The Father did what I knew it would from having seen the play but it did it in a different way taking advantage of the things that films can do, like change locations quickly.

The simple, poignant, heart-wrenching story was the neurological decline of The Father. It was told from his perspective, though not in the first person, and that meant that characters changed their appearances, changed where they were living and changed what they had said. There were multiple actors playing the same role and also different roles, e.g. two played the daughter and one of those also played a nurse. We were always a little confused as to what was really going on and that gave us just a clue as to how The Father saw things.

Anthony Hopkins was brilliant as The Father as I knew he would be because he had played a similar role with great aplomb in Red 2. He is also a bloody good actor in everything else that I have seen him in.

The rest of the production, including the fabulously furnished flats and the gentle cinematography enriched the experience without ever detracting from the centrepiece of the drama, The Father.

Given the subject matter, neurodisability, it was never going to be an easy film to watch, and nor would it be to everyone's taste, but it held my full attention for an hour and a half and was very rewarding if not, in the usual sense of the word, entertaining.