‘Freud’s Last Session’: AFI Fest Review – Screen Daily – 28th October 2023

BY TIM GRIERSON

Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode anchor this suprisingly muted meeting of minds between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis

[SOURCE: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS]

‘FREUD’S LAST SESSION’

Dir: Matthew Brown. Ireland/UK. 2023. 122mins

How best to navigate life: through reason or faith? Freud’s Last Session features two worthy combatants facing off on the issue in 1939 but, despite its thoughtful ruminations and supple performances, this period drama fails to produce the expected intellectual fireworks. Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode are commendable in their roles as, respectively, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and author C.S. Lewis, their debate over the existence of God juxtaposed with the Nazis’ troubling invasion of Poland. Unfortunately, the tasteful approach ends up being a hindrance: director and co-writer Matthew Brown allows the story to be so stately and reserved that the two men’s passion for their competing worldviews doesn’t fully register.

Set for release in the US on December 22 through Sony Pictures Classics, Freud’s Last Session hopes its AFI Fest world premiere will help pave the way for serious awards-season consideration. The film, based on Mark St. Germain’s 2009 play, posits the possibility of a meeting between the famed neurologist and the acclaimed author that may have never occurred, a premise that should intrigue older arthouse crowds. But tempered reviews may impact long-term prospects.

In September 1939 in London, the aged, ailing Freud (Hopkins) welcomes to his home Lewis (Goode), curious why this seemingly bright Oxford professor believes in God. A former atheist turned Christian whose heralded Chronicles Of Narnia novels would not be published until about a decade later, Lewis is excited for the opportunity to show Freud that true believers are not, as Freud puts it, imbeciles. But as the two men spend the day arguing their cases, they occasionally learn more about each other, with flashbacks offering insights into their past.

Brown (The Man Who Knew Infinity) co-wrote the screenplay with St. Germain, collaborating with production designer Luciana Arrighi and cinematographer Ben Smithard to craft a handsome, inviting film. Hopkins has the right weathered look for Freud, who is battling oral cancer, the Oscar-winner giving the iconic doctor a feisty, belittling attitude as he toys with the slightly intimidated younger man. Modest but refusing to back down, Lewis is soft-spoken and unguarded – although Goode relishes the moments his character effectively counter-punches, temporarily knocking the arrogant Freud back on his heels.

But Freud’s Last Session is more than a showdown between the neurologist and the professor. Both men are struggling with complicated relationships with women close to them. For Freud, it’s with his beloved daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), a brilliant psychoanalyst who is closeted, afraid of what her father might think of her sexuality — even though she happily caters to his every whim, constantly seeking his approval. Meanwhile, Lewis has for years been involved with Janie (Orla Brady), the mother of his best friend who died beside him on the battlefield during the Great War. There is a gentle irony that, for all of Freud and Lewis’ deeply-considered philosophical positions, they experience the same difficulties in their personal life as anyone else, these women exposing their flawed humanity.

That gentleness hints at the picture’s larger problem, however, with Brown crafting a tidy prestige drama that refuses to go very deep or take many chances. A smattering of flashbacks triggered by Freud and Lewis’ conversation help open up the story beyond the doctor’s cosy cottage, but these key glimpses inside their lives are not especially revealing. Likewise, for as much as the two men talk, the dialogue rarely crackles, which is surprising as they are arguing about one of the core questions that has gripped humanity for centuries. Hopkins’ playful surliness and Goode’s debonair wit make for some fun sparring, but anyone invested in the issues Freud’s Last Session purports to explore will come away disappointed, the characters rarely drawing blood.

As the protagonists debate, the drumbeat of war grows louder in the distance: Germany has moved into Poland, with England fearful of what may come next. Freud and his family are Jewish, and escaped Vienna because of Hitler – but this real and present danger feels oddly muted, presented as a harrowing backdrop yet unsatisfyingly dramatised. Whether it’s the encroaching Nazis or this imagined showdown between two towering minds, Freud’s Last Session has the potential to be explosive but, not unlike Lewis, it’s a little too polite, a little too reticent. The film ends on a nicely ambiguous note, suggesting that existence cannot be fully understood through either belief in God or surety in logic. But by not engaging with either position with much vigour, Brown leaves both sides of the argument wanting.

Production companies: Last Session, Subotica

International sales: WestEnd Films, info@westendfilms.com

Producers: Alan Greisman, Hannah Leader, Tristan Orpen Lynch, Rick Nicita, Robert Stillman, Meg Thomson

Screenplay: Mark St. Germain and Matthew Brown, based on the play by Mark St. Germain

Cinematography: Ben Smithard

Production design: Luciana Arrighi

Editing: Paul Tothill

Music: Coby Brown

Main cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Jeremy Northam, Orla Brady, Stephen Campbell Moore, Padraic Delaney, Tarek Bishara

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‘Freud’s Last Session’ Review: Ace Turns by Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode Are Undercut by Subplot Overload – Hollywood Reporter – 28th October 2023

Matthew Brown’s film, which had its world premiere at AFI Fest, is an adaptation of an off-Broadway play centering on an imagined exchange between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis.

BY STEPHEN FARBER

[Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode in ‘Freud’s Last Session’ SONY PICTURES CLASSICS / COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION]

Bigger and longer are not always better. Case in point: Freud’s Last Session, the lavish film based on a modest off-Broadway play that captivated theater audiences a decade ago. Playwright Mark St. Germain worked with director Matthew Brown (The Man Who Knew Infinity) to reshape his two-character drama about an imaginary conversation between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis as they debate the existence of God. That provocative exchange is still in the movie, and it sometimes crackles, thanks to the performances of Matthew Goode as Lewis and, especially, Anthony Hopkins as Freud. But the heart of the story is constantly undermined by a surfeit of asides about Lewis’ experiences in the First World War, Freud’s highly charged relationship with his daughter Anna, and several other subplots.

The main culprit here may be the current fashion for time-fractured, nonlinear narratives. It is rare these days to see a movie that unfolds in strict chronological order. Sometimes the nonlinear template can work effectively, as in Christopher Nolan’s scintillating Oppenheimer (though not in all of Nolan’s movies). But the vogue has definitely run wild and can weaken what might have been compelling stories if told in a more straightforward manner.

Freud’s Last Session

THE BOTTOM LINE

The conversations scintillate, the flashbacks irritate.

Venue: AFI Fest

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries

Director: Matthew Brown

Screenwriters: Mark St. Germain, Matthew Brown

2 hours 1 minute

The main story takes place in September of 1939, just after Hitler has invaded Poland and set Europe at war. Freud arrived in London a year earlier, after the Nazis marched into Vienna. Lewis is an Oxford don who has not yet written his beloved Narnia books, but who has recently embraced Christianity after years as a nonbeliever. He admires Freud’s work and relishes the idea of engaging in a debate about religion with the brilliant psychoanalyst. Freud’s skepticism about religion has been well documented in writings like The Future of an Illusion, but Lewis, realizing that Freud is dying of cancer, suspects the doctor might be receptive to contemplating the idea of an afterlife.

It is understandable that Brown wanted to move the action outside Freud’s study, and a scene in which an air raid drives Freud and Lewis, along with many other Londoners, to take refuge in a church (suitably ironic) is a valuable addition to the story. Less valuable are a rash of flashbacks. Some show Freud as a child with his weak-willed father. Many others show Lewis’ convoluted history, beginning with the death of his mother when he was a child, going on to his travails during World War I and a bizarre interlude involving his romance with the mother (Orla Brady) of a comrade who was killed in battle.

There are also scenes portraying Lewis’ friendship with Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien (Stephen Campbell Moore). A few of these sequences would perhaps be interesting in a biographical film about Lewis, but they seem rushed and perfunctory here and have very little bearing on the philosophical dialogue between Lewis and Freud that is the heart of the story.

Some of the subplots involving Freud are more compelling, particularly when they touch on his relationship with his daughter Anna (vibrantly played by Liv Lisa Fries), who went on to become a renowned child analyst in the years after Freud’s death. But even here, the film includes a number of tantalizing tidbits without doing them full justice.

At one point Freud tells Lewis that he psychoanalyzed Anna himself, something that would today be considered an outrageous breach of professional ethics. The issue is raised and then dropped. We also learn of Anna’s lesbian relationship with a fellow analyst, Dorothy Burlingham (Jodi Balfour), which her father has trouble accepting. In one scene Freud reveals surprising tolerance toward male homosexuality but expresses his disapproval of lesbianism. This probably reflects sexist prejudices rampant at the time, but the subject is left unresolved.

All these asides detract from the intriguing battle of words between the intellectuals. But even acknowledging and regretting the conceptual misjudgments that mar the film, there are moments to enjoy. The conversations between the doctor and the don remain stimulating, and the two central performances add to the electricity.

Goode has inhabited a range of roles in such films as Downton Abbey, The Imitation Game, Match Point and The Lookout (in which he made a scary villain). Here, he’s convincing as an intellectual who clearly admires Freud and sincerely wants to help him find consolation. Hopkins is superb. He chooses to play the part without an Austrian accent, but he perfectly captures the doctor’s mental vigor as well as his physical frailty. Hopkins has had a pretty amazing late-career resurgence, and this performance can be added to that list of achievements. It’s unfortunate that Brown keeps cutting away from the analyst to all those extraneous minor characters.

Another plus is that this film is exceptionally well made. The cinematography by Ben Smithard (who photographed Hopkins’ recent movies with director Florian Zeller, The Father and The Son) and the production design by Luciana Arrighi (who worked on two earlier Hopkins movies, Howards End and The Remains of the Day) help to bring the past alive. Coby Brown’s score is subtle and haunting. And for those in search of an intriguing companion piece, check out Shadowlands (a superior movie) to see Hopkins as C.S. Lewis at another period in the famous author’s life.

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“FREUD’S LAST SESSION” Review – Next Best Picture – 28th October 2023

By Tom O’Brien

THE STORY – Tells of a meeting between C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud and the debate on God that follows, and discussions of the nature of their relationships with other people such as Freud’s daughter.

THE CAST – Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode & Liv Lisa Fries

THE TEAM – Matt Brown (Director) & Mark St. Germain (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 118 Minutes

For those authors who delight in tossing historical facts to the wind, writing about imagined meetings between great figures from history must seem like catnip. You can make up anything about such a get-together and defend it by saying, “Well, it could have happened.” That temptation occurs with screenwriters as well, resulting in such memorable, if fictitious, meetings as those between two great Indian leaders in “RRR” and two popes in, well…”The Two Popes.” There’s even a consultation between a fictional character (Sherlock Holmes) and a real-life psychiatrist (Sigmund Freud) in the memorable “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” which may serve as the peak of literary speculation.

Freud again figures in the latest “What if?” mashup, Matthew Brown’s film adaptation of “Freud’s Last Session,” the 2009 stage play by Mark St. Germain that posited a possibly fictional meeting between confirmed atheist Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and famed Oxford professor and recent Christian convert C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) in 1939 London. The meeting takes place on September 3, just two days before Hitler was to invade Poland, triggering the start of World War II, and Londoners are in a panic as Lewis arrives at Freud’s home late (as his host rudely points out).

Freud has sought the meeting to confront Lewis over his new-found belief in God, maybe seeking amusement or an intellectual battle of wits. Or perhaps, given the fact that Freud is in the late stages of inoperable oral cancer, he is looking to be convinced that he is wrong about the afterlife and there is indeed a divine plan after his imminent death. Even as other topics are broached — families, the war, the power of music, and, of course, sex — the specter of death seems to hang over every conversation as an almost looming presence. It’s as if Freud knows that the clock is ticking, and he has only a short amount of time left to get the answers that will help to put his mind at ease.

This is pretty heady material for mass audience entertainment, one that could only work with actors as skilled as Hopkins and Goode. In many ways, Lewis, with his defense of God’s mercy (even as he is suffering from PTSD from WWI), is the more challenging role. An unassuming man, Goode’s Lewis is immediately questioned by his intellectual host, and it’s a joy to see Goode marshaling his strength to go toe-to-toe with the great Freud (and, by extension, the great Hopkins, as well).

One might think that Freud is just the kind of “great man” character that is totally in Hopkins’ wheelhouse, and in one sense, it is — one man who has earned authority and respect portraying another. But Hopkins reveals a vulnerability to Freud that may be unexpected but very welcome. Yes, his Freud is in complete control of his intellectual powers, but his body is forsaking him, with his ultimate fate soon to be determined by factors totally out of his control. That he is being portrayed by an actor like Hopkins — who, despite his current remarkable Oscar-winning renaissance, is nonetheless in the twilight of his career — brings an added poignancy to his portrayal that can’t be measured.

If only the film around them was up to the quality of its stars. When adapting a two-character, one-set play to the screen, director Brown and playwright St. Germain, who joined forces on the film’s screenplay, have understandably chosen to make the story more cinematic by creating additional storylines for characters who are merely mentioned in the play. The codependent relationship between Freud and his psychoanalyst daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), for example, may be crucial to his character. Still, the film creates an elaborate work life for Anna, as well as including her real-life romantic relationship with a female colleague (Jodi Balfour) that is intriguing but whose story value may not justify its length. Similarly, the backstory of Lewis’ long-standing relationship with the mother of a dead Army buddy may be an interesting factoid, but it keeps us from getting back to the place where we really want to be — with Freud and Lewis going at it.

Still, the opportunity to see actors of this quality flex with roles this complex should not be taken lightly. Even if the vehicle that delivers them to us can be wobbly at times, their remarkable work will be the elements for which “Freud’s Last Session” will be remembered for some time to come.

RECAP

THE GOOD – Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode are in top form in this imagined meeting between a dying Sigmund Freud and the writer C.S. Lewis, where they battle over the existence of God and the promise of an afterlife.

THE BAD – If only the film around them was up to the quality of its stars. Lengthy sidebar stories about characters who are merely mentioned in the original play lack the dramatic punch of the central narrative and become mere distractions instead.

THE OSCAR PROSPECTS – Best Actor & Best Adapted Screenplay

THE FINAL SCORE – 6/10

AFI Film Festival Debuts Instant Classic ‘Freud’s Last Session’ – Telly Visions – 28th October 2023