'Freud's Last Session' review: Film adaptation and its discontents
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, November 4, 2024


'Freud's Last Session' review: Film adaptation and its discontents
Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis probably never met. What the stage-based film presupposes is: Maybe they did?

by Ben Kenigsberg



NEW YORK, NY.- In “Freud’s Last Session,” when Oxford academic C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) arrives late to the London home of Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins), Freud’s chow chow, Jofi, brushes him off. The dog, Freud explains, values punctuality.

The men’s encounter — concocted for Mark St. Germain’s 2009 play of the same title — is imaginary, but the timing is not. The setting is September 1939, and Hitler has invaded Poland. The atheist Freud has sought out Lewis, whom he has never met, to learn how such a sterling intellect could believe in God. Given the historical backdrop (we hear radio of Neville Chamberlain announcing Britain’s entry into the war), that hardly seems like the most pressing topic. That’s true even if Freud, who has oral cancer, would be dead before the end of that month.

But the war context gives director Matthew Brown, who shares screenwriting credit with St. Germain, license to wage a futile campaign against the material’s stage-bound origins. An air raid siren sends Lewis and Freud out of the house and to a nearby church, where Freud helps Lewis through a triggered recollection of his service in World War I. Freud shows off his surprising expertise in Christian iconography, after dismissing his interest as simple art appreciation.

The men return to Freud’s den, but the movie, already diffuse with flashbacks, is hardly content to stay put. Before the tête-à-tête is over, the film will have shown us Lewis in the trenches (Freud is fascinated by Lewis’ fixation on the mother of a fallen friend); the Gestapo’s arrest and improbable release of Freud’s youngest daughter, Anna, before the family’s flight from Vienna; and Freud’s father chiding young Sigmund after seeing the boy cross himself.

Expanding what was a two-character play, the film adds a major part for Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), a pioneer in the field of child psychoanalysis. Her devotion to her father is depicted as so intense that a colleague diagnoses an attachment disorder. But her dad refuses to accept that she is in a relationship with a woman, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (Jodi Balfour). And his professional curiosity about her mind may have monstrously overpowered his compassion as a father.

What a viewer (or a therapist) should take from their queasily etched codependency is unclear, and it’s not certain that the script made sense of it, either. But the Sigmund-Anna muddle has more juice than the genteel intellectual parrying between Sigmund and C.S. (or Jack, as he was known to familiars), which has been carefully written to a draw. Lewis argues that the Gospels can’t be myths because they are too disorganized. Freud scoffs that “bad storytelling” doesn’t prove Christ was a divine figure. Lewis pounces when Freud unthinkingly says, “Thank God.” Later, Freud asks how God could let him lose a daughter to the flu and a grandson to tuberculosis.

Eventually they bridge their differences, in a détente made grotesquely literal (and Freudian?) when Lewis reaches into Freud’s mouth to help with a dental prosthesis. Hopkins already argued the other side of this case when he played an older, Narnia-era Lewis in “Shadowlands” (1993) — a Lewis who, oddly, gave a near-identical speech to this film’s Freud about humanity’s need to “grow up.” In any case, Hopkins parlayed Lewis’ propriety, airs and implied discomfort around sex into a more compelling character than Goode has been given, and one who — faced with his wife’s death — urgently considered the absence of God.

The look of “Freud’s Last Session” could make one doubt the presence of a cinematographer. Shot after shot is so gray, shadowy and colorless that it’s hard not to wonder why Brown didn’t shoot in black-and-white, whose contrast and timelessness would suit the stakes. The filmmakers might argue that black-and-white is no longer commercially viable. But Freud would say that nobody wanted anyone to see this movie.



‘Freud’s Last Session’

Rated PG-13. A cigar that’s just a cigar. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes. In theaters.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

December 23, 2023

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Can pad Thai diplomacy change the world?

Mapping the lesser-known territories of American modern dance

A circa 16th-century mask of Bhairava is returned to Nepal

BMA updates contemporary and European galleries with works by Baltimore region artists and major loans

Now, Black figures have a name, a frame and a show

Flint Institute of Arts introduces new logo and mission statement

'Freud's Last Session' review: Film adaptation and its discontents

Bertoia's consecutive sales of toys and holiday antiques draw enthusiastic crowds

Mennour opens an exhibition of works by Bertrand Lavier

Gavin Turk's exhibition 'Still Life' opening in Knokke

Rare and iconic artworks by Baroque masters unveiled together in world premiere exhibition

Annual episode-based exhibition "Spirit of Play" now open at Craft in America Center

Bethan Laura Wood 'Kaleidoscope-o-rama: 2023 MECCA x NGV Women' in Design Commission

Jill Newhouse Gallery takes a closer look at painting by Pierre Bonnard, 'The Little Street'

deCordova welcomes Hugh Hayden's 'Huff and a Puff' to its Sculpture Park

Pop-punk has long been funny, but who gets to make the jokes?

Wembley Park and Emergency Exit Arts present: The Luminaze, an immersive neon winter walkthrough experience

Exhibition showcases new work from 12 visionary Houston-based Black artists

Orlando Museum of Art to exhibit Bill Viola's Moving Stillness (Mount Rainier), 1979

Ogden Museum of Southern Art announces $20 million bequest from Roger Ogden

Group exhibition DOKA at M Leuven features contemporary artworks

Stephenson's welcomes New Year with Jan. 1 auction of high-quality antiques, art & jewelry from Philadelphia-area estate




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful