El padre

Anthony Hopkins portrays in a fantastic way how life erodes, piece by piece, when dementia takes over an old man's life. Olivia Coleman, who plays his daughter, shows with greatness how painful and sad it is to see her loved father slowly disappear into the fog. The film really grabbed me and tore my heart apart.

It's just so sad and also a bit terrifying. My wife works as a nurse in an alzheimer's ward, and she said this is the most realistic depiction of the disease she has ever seen. She also said in her opinion it should be required viewing for anyone that works with alzheimer's or dementia patients. What a movie!

And then you get Anthony Hopkins in THE FATHER. This is a devastatingly, heartbreakingly-brilliant performance and a great film. Hopkins' range is incredible. He goes from charming and funny to menacing to wholly lost in seconds. From man to child on a dime. It's a powerful rumination on a terrifying disease, bolstered by Sir Tony at his finest, a strong supporting turn from Olivia Colman, and an excellent script by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller (based on Zeller's play). It's a daring move to tell the story from the perspective of Hopkins' character as his mind increasingly deteriorates. A savvy one too, as the audience is forced to engage to truly understand what is real, who is who, and where precisely we are in our protagonist's gut-wrenching journey. This may be Hopkins best work, a late-career revelation that once again reminds us why he's one of our finest cinematic performers. Be warned. If you've ever been touched by the tragedy of dementia, this film could wreck you.

This is a film that stays with you. Of course there's the brilliant performances but there's more. While other films have taken on old age and dementia, those films took on coping with a significant other's condition. The difference here is that the film is from the sufferer's perspective. You therefore see these events as if you yourself have dementia. And it's stunning how, when you walk away, you know you can.

The Father couldn't be more realistic when talking about Alzheimer's disease. I've seen my grandfather walking that path. He was a smart man but once the dementia kicked in he was barely recognizable, which was a hard thing to witness when you knew him as the intellectual he was. The Father just nailed this subject, bringing back so many memories, memories we would rather forget but that you can't. Living with a loved one with this disease isn't easy at all, certainly not when that person sometimes doesn't remember who you are. I didn't knew Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his role, but after watching this movie I can only say it's highly deserved. It's probably one of his better performances ever, and that at 83 years old. The Father isn't a movie that will give you a lot of joy, it's sad and scary but certainly worth watching. Nobody wants to have a loved one suffering from dementia, it's a nightmare to live with. I remember my grandfather starting to smoke a cigarette like it was a thing he always did and that whilst he stopped more than forty years ago. I remember him telling me he was going crazy after asking me the same question for the twentieth time in barely an hour. He knew it was all going downhill, he knew he was a burden to everybody, and that must hurt when you are still that little bit lucid to understand that. I watched several movies about dementia but this one is just the most realistic. It's sad but that's life, everybody should watch it so they can be prepared if the disease ever would hit a loved one.