starring Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, adds to a string of sterling late-chapter performances by the 86-year-old actor. He was the reason to see and the papal foil to Jonathan Pryce's Pope Francis in With the exception of James Gray's more cinematically composed 鈥淎rmageddon Time,鈥� the movies have offered simple, stagy showcases for Hopkins, a lion in winter.
鈥淔reud's Last Session,鈥� which expands in theaters this weekend, also comes from the stage and, like 鈥淭he Two Popes,鈥� centers on the tete-a-tete of intellectual opposites. Mark St. Germain鈥檚 2009 two-character play brought together Freud and C.S. Lewis (played by Matthew Goode in the film) for a speculative meeting between the two in 1939 London.
An aged Freud, suffering from oral cancer, prepares to receive the Oxford academic at his London home while war with Germany is growing inevitable. The factual jumping off point is that Freud, three weeks before his death, is recorded as meeting with an unnamed Oxford don. As Freud's daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) prepares to leave in the morning, he mentions Lewis' impending arrival. 鈥淭he Christian apologist?" she responds. 鈥淵ah,鈥� he chuckles.
Their conversation, which makes up the bulk of the film, imagines a spiritual debate between the father of psychoanalysis, a proud atheist and man of science, and the theological Lewis, a believer who in the years after 鈥淔reud's Last Session鈥� takes place would pen his Christian apologetic novel 鈥淭he Screwtape Letters鈥� and, later, the fantasy parables of 鈥淭he Chronicles of Narnia.鈥�
If their adverse positions didn't make for enough drama, air raid sirens are sounding (Hitler has just taken Poland) and Freud's health is bad enough that he, in between dripping morphine into his whiskey, several times eyes a suicide pill during the day. Death and history buffer their talk of God, fear and pain.
But the elements never quite cohere in 鈥淔reud's Last Session.鈥� The rhythm of conversation feels choppy and lacks the probing give and take that can electrify a two-hander. Freud 鈥� or it it Hopkins? 鈥� so dominates their talk. Goode, with less to chew on, remains more observational and removed for his Lewis to ever fully engage Freud.
Director Matthew Brown, who shares screenwriting credit with St. Germain, has artificially 鈥渙pened up鈥� the play to include flashbacks and side plots, most notably that of Anna, whose extreme devotion to her father factors into Freud's discussions of sexuality. Yet Anna's story, including a relationship with a woman, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (Jodi Balfour), not acknowledged by her father, is too complex to graft into the theological debate. It feels like a movie in its own right. That 鈥淔reud's Last Session鈥� is overly murky in shadows also contributes to the movie's lack of clarity.
But Freud and Lewis' dialogue sometimes finds compelling points of commonality. Fantasy figures prominently into both minds 鈥� Freud in his analysis of dreams and Lewis in the dreamworlds he'll create. And both come to their beliefs in part from childhood experiences that color their lives. 鈥淚 have only two words to offer humanity: Grow up,鈥� says Freud.
And Hopkins remains riveting. Some three decades after memorably playing Lewis, himself, in 1993's 鈥淪hadowlands,鈥� he now plays across from the novelist, adding to the poignance of the movie.
But I suspect my memory will bleed some of these late films of Hopkins' together. In each, he grapples with a life of accomplishment just as he does present pains and joys. He might be plucking an azalea in 鈥淔reud's Last Session," or watching a grandson fly a model rocket in 鈥淎rmageddon Time." But each performance crackles with wit, wisdom and playfulness in the face of the inevitable. They add up to a wistful cycle of films of big questions and small moments.
鈥淔reud's Last Session,鈥� a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for thematic material, some bloody/violent images, sexual material and smoking. Running time: 108 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
