Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson November 20, 2024

Matt Brown's third feature FREUD'S LAST SESSION (2023) has arrived courtesy of UK label Vertigo Releasing. In English, with optional English SDH. Region "B" locked.

Freud's Last Session aspires to be a study of two great thinkers with competing ideas but is only a partially successful cinematic exercise. The film is based on the eponymous 2010 Off-Broadway play by Mark St. Germain, who later co-wrote the screenplay with director Matt Brown. The play was "suggested" by Armand M. Nicholi's 2002 book, The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life. Nicholi placed Lewis and Freud's arguments side by side in his text. In 2004, PBS adapted Nicholi's book into a three-and-a-half-hour documentary, which contains dramatic reenactments as well as interviews with biographers and historians. Near the end of his life in late summer 1939, Freud met with an unnamed Oxford don in his study located in Northwestern London. The famed psychoanalyst fled his native Vienna over a year earlier before the Nazis invaded Austria. Since there's no documented proof that Freud and Lewis ever met, the conversations between the two are an imagined debate that may or may not have taken place.

In the stage production of Germain's play, Freud and Lewis are portrayed, respectively, by Martin Rayner and Mark H. Dold. In Brown's adaptation, they're played by actors who are much more familiar to cinema audiences. In a London study, 83-year-old Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and 40-year-old author C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) agree to meet and debate God's existence, the concepts of love and sex, and the meaning of life. Germain and Brown begin the narrative on September 3, 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany and two days after Hitler invaded Poland. Freud is battling advanced jaw cancer but his intellectual vigor and feisty nature shine through Hopkins's passionate performance. Freud is an atheist in no small part because he lost his 27-year-old daughter, Sophie, to Spanish influenza. Freud's 5-year-old grandson, Heinele, succumbed to tuberculosis. Freud not only lacks faith but also denies these familial tragedies were part of God's plan because God doesn't exist. There are other theological reasons why Freud doesn't believe in God, which he tries to present to Lewis. Meanwhile, Lewis had been a non-believer in God the first part of his life but converts to Christianity following stimulating conversations with his friend and fellow author, J.R.R. Tolkien (Stephen Campbell Moore).

Dr. Freud will hypnotize you.

I have read Germain's play, which doesn't change scenes outside of Freud’s study. Brown's movie attempts to open the play up by dramatizing the dreams and memories of Freud and Lewis. For instance, Freud gazes out his office window and reminisces nostalgically about his childhood. Lewis dreams of a nighttime forest with deer. The major subplot that isn't a dream or memory is Freud's relationship with his daughter, Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), and her relationship with Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (Jodi Balfour). Anna later became a child analyst and was professionally analyzed by her father. The film portrays a conflicted Freud who's contradicted by his views on sexuality. On the one hand, he's tolerant of male homosexuality. But on the other hand, he frowns upon lesbianism. Anna has more than a platonic relationship with Dorothy. While Freud sees them together, the audience only gets to see his reaction. There's no externalization of feelings.

More successful is a flashback Lewis has to his service in the Somerset Light Infantry during World War I when he partook in what resembles the Battle of the Somme. The short sequence is harrowing and poignant, evoking similar scenes in Spielberg's War Horse (2012) and Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022). Lewis made a promise to his friend and comrade in arms, Paddy (George Andrew-Clarke), that he would help to look after his mother if Paddy doesn't make it home. While there's a good scene later in a hospital, this is a subplot that could have used more development.

It seems that Brown was concerned so much about his movie becoming too stagey that he sometimes forgets about the intellectual dialogue between his two protagonists. As a result, he ventures off in other territory. Freud's Last Session is ambitious in scope and a longer runtime would have been benefited the film to flesh out scenes and subplots. Germain's play delivers strong writing and omitting substantial portions of the original dialogue represents a missed opportunity by Brown and his collaborators.

Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Freud's Last Session appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The transfer generally looks sharp but is hampered by mediocre compression. Vertigo Releasing has put the 110-minute feature on a BD-25, which only uses 21 GB of space. Image quality could have improved with a maxed-out bitrate. Vertigo has encoded the film at an average video bitrate of just 23897 kbps. The black levels are most impacted because they reveal some macroblocking. The movie is very dark with little-to-no sunlight. As you can see from my screen captures, most scenes are completely desaturated with low levels of light. Cinematographer Ben Smithard supplies some atmospheric lighting through stained-glass windows for the scene where 6-year-old Sigmund and his mother visit a sanctuary (see Screenshot #s 5 and 11). My video score is 3.75/5.00.

Thirteen chapters accompany the disc.

Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Vertigo has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround mix (2173 kbps, 16-bit) as the lone sound track. The audio fares better than the transfer. Dialogue is clear, crisp, and intelligible. (Hopkins speaks through his native Welshian accent rather than a Viennese accent.) The overhead planes and air-raid sirens open up the surrounds nicely. The rears also do a supple job of picking up natural ambience from the native 5.1 mix. Composer Coby Brown, brother of co-writer/director Matt Brown, has written a classy score in the same vein as other dramatic scores for British period dramas such as Alexander Desplat's music for Hooper's The King's Speech (2010). But unlike Desplat, Brown hasn't crafted a memorable theme. His score for Freud's Last Session is comprised of relatively short cues that last around a minute and a half.

There are optional English SDH for the feature. Please note that portions of the dialogue are in German and Hebrew. The disc supports obligatory English subtitles for those portions (e.g., see Screenshot #20).

Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Sony Pictures Classics R1 DVD has deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes featurette. Vertigo only has trailers for its extras.

• Original Theatrical Trailer (2:09, 1080p) - the official UK trailer for Freud's Last Session presented in 2.39:1 anamorphic widescreen (average video bitrate: 24637 kbps) and with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround mix (4003 kbps, 24-bit).

• Bonus Preview (2:14) - a theatrical trailer for Widow Clicquot (2013), which loads before the main menu.

Freud's Last Session Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Freud's Last Session is a respectable but not entirely interesting exploration of what a meeting of the minds might have looked like between two great thinkers. Director Matt Brown wasn't totally invested in Mark St. Germain's dialogue from the play and his film consequently veers off in different directions to mixed results. I prefer Brown's second feature, The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), which I remember fondly seeing in the theater. Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) examines an all-together different period and story in Freud's life compared to this 2023 production. I regard it is as a superior picture. Freud's Last Session is worth seeing, though, for the performances by Hopkins and Goode. Vertigo Releasing's transfer is generally very good but it suffers from relatively poor compression at times. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track opens up the sound field nicely on occasion. RECOMMENDED with some qualifiers.