Based on his play, written for the screen by he and Christopher Hampton (Atonement). Devastating study of man with Alzheimer's, how it plays with his memories and emotions. A tour de force from Anthony Hopkins, who rightly won the Oscar and BAFTA, as did the screenplay. Olivia Colmans was nominated as was Yorgos Lamprinos' editing (which again, I didn't notice at all).
With Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots.
French Zeller was an award-winning novelist, but thinks he didn't really find himself until he started writing plays like The Mother, The Truth, The Lie and The Son. (That, by the way, was four plays, not one with a long title.) In the play version of this, all the set was gradually stripped away until there's only a bed left. Here, production designer Peter Francis and set decorator Cathy Featherstone keeping mucking around with things so what was once a bedroom is now a cupboard, the kitchen changes design, the hospital chairs appear in the flat. It's wonderfully disorientating.
Photographed by Ben Smithard, who prowls up and down the corridors, music by Ludovico Einaudi, with a beautifully melancholy aria from 'Les Pecheurs de Perles' by Bizet, 'Je Crois Entendre Encore', which Woody also used in Match Point (though it's credited in that in the Italian - 'Mi Par D'Udir Ancora').
One of the films of the year, of course.
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