New Delhi: Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman play father and daughter in Florian Zeller’s intricate relationship drama, “The Father”. The film received six Oscar nominations, including one in the Best Actor category for Hopkins, for his role as a man in his eighties struggling with dementia, and one in the Best Supporting Actor category for Colman, who played his conflict-ridden daughter interpret.
The respective roles, as well as the adaptation of the screen, were emotionally exhausting for the two award-winning actors, and they confess that they return with self-realization from the shooting experience of the film, based on a play titled “Le Pere” by Zeller.
‘If you work for years, let the good plays and movies explore your life. This one made me think about my past, my parents and especially the sweet sadness of it all, ”Hopkins said.
He remembers how the particularly emotional last scene initially did not work. ‘The last scene did not work and we had a little break. I walked around the set and saw the chair where I was sitting before. There was a picture of my daughters and myself in my young days, and the camera was going out the window. It hit me, ”says the actor.
For Hopkins, the film brought back many memories. ‘I remember the time I took my mother to the hospital when my father died, and I still remember looking at him and his feet were cold. That was almost 40 years ago and I thought ‘yes, you’re not that hot either. There he is and one day I will be there ‘. It’s a wonderful thing – and I know it’s weird to say it’s a wonderful thing – but it’s good to remember that it all disappeared with the wind. I remember I got his glasses, and he had a little notebook with a map of America. He wanted to come to America, and I told him I would take him. “Of course he was ill and I promised him to cheer him up, that when he came out of the hospital, I would take him to New York and drive there,” he recalls.
‘I remember one day he was sitting in the hospital looking at the map, and he was wetting his pajamas and I remember it was all so fragile when he did the scene. This is what I am realizing more and more now – it’s all so fragile. But I am aware of fragility. It makes me enjoy life more, I laugh now. I like watching old guys on television who walked like Sinatra and others. There is a great victory in all these things by acknowledging death and mortality. “Well, I’m here and I’ve survived all these years,” said the actor.
For Colman, the film was a reminder of how cruel the process of aging could actually be.
‘It made me think of my parents, and aging can be so cruel and rude. My mom said that every generation thinks they invented sex, but everyone was naturally in love and passionate. My parents are still in love, but it’s unfair that it’s hard to go up and eventually I’ll be like that. It did make me think of them and I am so happy that they are still together and happy, ”she said.
Hopkins added: ‘Olivia was talking about parents getting old. At the end of the year I turn 83, my legs ache. When I was doing the movie, I realized that my brain was playing with my tricks because it sent messages to my back that I was an old man. So I had to tell myself every morning that I was just acting and pretending because your body responds to what your brain says. But I accepted that my knees ached, I could no longer run. ‘
‘The great psychiatrist Karl Jung once said that all is well when you reach your forties and fifties, and then there’s something you see on the horizon and that’s death, and that makes you appreciate life. It’s a wake-up call that none of us are that special. It’s a bit humble that we are not so hot and all the glory is gone, ‘the veteran actor added.
Hopkins and Colman interacted with IANS during a press conference for select media, which was also attended by the film’s screenwriter-director Florian Zeller.
Zeller, who was nominated at the Oscars this year in the category of best adapted screenplay for his work in the film (along with Christopher Hampton), began his process of adapting his play in the film.
‘I kept the narrative of the play, which tries to tell the story from within, and put the audience in a specific position to try to understand what was going on, and look for exit and meaning. For me, it was the opportunity to play with disorientation. I did not want the father to just be a story. I wanted it to be an experience. To innovate with the experience, frustration, anxiety, uncertainty – about what it means to lose your poll. So it was taken from the play, ”Zeller explained.
‘But I did not want it to be just the play, but I also wanted it to be cinematic, so I tried to do what only cinema can do. It was mainly about using the set in a cinematic way, for example. When I wrote the screenplay, I drew the layout at the same time as if it were the main character in the story. In the beginning when we enter the house, there is no doubt that we recognize his space, his furniture, his nod-knacks, and step by step, slightly always in the background, you have some small changes, some of metamorphosis of the set, of the apartment so that it creates the feeling that you know where you are and at the same time are not sure where you are, and that is the beginning of the doubt process, ‘the filmmaker added.
‘I wanted to play with the feeling of disorientation with the set. That’s why there are so many hallways and doors because I wanted to play with them. It means that you recognize the way to travel to that space, but that something happened, but that you do not know what happened, so that you are constantly uncertain about where you are. In a way, it was very concrete and visual that it would tell a story of loss. What was challenging and exciting for me was doing it in the background when you were focused on the character. That’s why I shot the film in the studio, so I had the courage to do what I wanted – to be able to remove a wall, to change the proportion or colors of walls in a minute, ”sums up Zeller.
Source: Telangana Today