Florian Zeller is certainly

an experienced playwright, but "The father" was his first feature film as a screenwriter and director - and what a film it was!

A unique story, so ingeniously and psychologically brilliantly told, where we sat on the first floor inside an old man's Alzheimer's brain.

Frighteningly well played by the always watchable senior Anthony Hopkins.

It was such an odd narrative approach that a repetition would probably have felt more like an epigone.

Florian Zeller now instead tells a straight story from A to painful Z, with only a few flashbacks, about a 17-year-old who suffers from acute depression - and his divorced parents Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern) fight for their son survival.

Vanessa Kirby stays in the background as Peter's new wife and mother to his newborn son.

There is also

another father here, namely Peter's egocentric upper-class father (Anthony Hopkins again), whose harmful influence on his son becomes increasingly apparent as the film progresses.

The old thief is admittedly only in a single scene, but nevertheless forms an important anchor point for the searing red thread that runs all the way to the aforementioned newborn boy.

Which of all these sons is actually referred to in the title becomes fluid.

Stylish and congenial.

And recognizable.

Our own upbringing shapes us as parents and it takes self-examination to be able to see and break the psychological legacy.

Banal, but "The son" portrays it in a fine way, including with a Chekhovian rifle.

In contrast

to the dynamic debut, the drama here is basically entirely concentrated on dialogue and acting, it seems that Zeller's theater routine has been given a bit of leeway, and a certain predictability puts small notches in the illusion.


But... then it is the academic paleness of reflection that speaks.

At the end of the film, I had to wait a few minutes to gather my facial features before I could step back into reality.

For a parent with similar experiences, "The son" is an exhausting Golgotha ​​walk, a spiritual steel bath - which is difficult to rate.