When the Oscar nominations were announced The Father was the only one I didn’t know too much about and hadn’t heard anything particularly so I thought it was just an Oscar bait, simple film about a daughter looking after her old father and had slipped into the Best Film category from the performances or because it wasn’t as big of a year for films. Then when it got to the BAFTAs and Sir Anthony Hopkins surprisingly won the best actor category ahead of Chadwick Boseman’s performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, I started to take it more seriously and then it took home the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Performance by an Actor in a leading role, meaning that Anthony Hopkins is the oldest winner ever at 83 years old. Boy, were my initial thoughts wrong!

The Father follows Anthony as his daughter is trying to help him as he gets older and can’t look after him anymore, when strange things start to happen and he begins to question what’s real and what’s happening.

Both the Oscar wins are completely deserved. We all know how good of an actor Anthony Hopkins has been through the years. If you go to think of one of the best performances of all time you will likely think of his performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, since then he was nominated 4 more times before this year where he put in one of the best performances I’ve seen in recent years let alone from a man over 80 years old. It’s a truly incredible performance and worth the cost of watching alone.

The other reason you should see the film is for it’s screenplay. The film is a engrossing, psychological look at what this man has to go through. The twists and turns that the story takes, the unexpected moments and even the expected moments are done so well that you’d have thought that the first time director and writer, Florian Zeller had been putting out this level of content his career, if he can continue this with another success (Florian’s next film is called The Son and will star Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern) he will very quickly start to be offered bigger and bigger projects and budgets.

I haven’t given it a perfect score because I felt Olivia Colman was good, not great. I know she got a nomination for Best Supporting but I think we’ve seen better from her, particularly at the beginning of the film I felt like there was some delivery of lines that didn’t work for me at all and felt straight up bad. I could also say that Rufus Sewell’s character felt a little big generic and one dimensional for me, but that’s just me being nitpicky. It was just missing that little bit more to make it perfect.

What did you think of The Father? Did it deserve it’s 2 Oscar wins?

Like I said on my previous review for Nobody, there’s some big films coming very soon so follow on Instagram @floodersfilms and/or like on Facebook to keep up to date with my latest reviews.