8.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus SewellDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Father would seem to be the antithesis of the classic Hollywood film and story, and it may be a sign of the shifting dynamics and audience acceptance of a film that falls into no traditional category. The central conflict is more inward than it is outward. The villain is the invisible passage of time and the increasingly evident, yet silent, internal break that is the result. It's an intimate drama about a crumbling mind, its star an aged man who is barely holding on to his faculties and all but incapable of living a life of sense of and structure. The film atypically explores his struggles through his own broken perspective. It's a jumbled mess of connected, yet still disparate, observations of and maneuverings in his small part of the world. Yet for as structurally scrambled as it may be, Director Florian Zeller, working off of his own stage production titled Le Père, builds a picture of resplendent elegance, speaking boldly and clearly on the very real struggles of mental deterioration, its impact on the one suffering from the break, and how those who are torn between the increasing challenges of caretaking and the need to push forward with their own lives are impacted by the increasingly sober and hopeless works necessary to sustain the man.
The Father was digitally photographed and the image translates to 1080p at a quality that approaches the current peak for this type of source on Blu-ray. It's remarkably clean and efficient. It's effortlessly crisp and clean, boasting an extraordinarily high level of detail across the board, ranging from complex facial elements and clothes to apartment furnishings. The action only rarely shifts to other locations but rest assured that even outside of the central set there's no shortage of essential clarity and razor-sharp detail to be found. Colors are bold and expressive and very neutral in contrast. There's a very nice balance between the warmer accents and furnishings inside the flat against some of the more bold examples of clothes that Anne in particular wears throughout the film. Every color appears dialed in for maximum intensity while maintaining critical lifelike balance. Black levels in a couple of dark nighttime shots are fine and skin tones are healthy and accurate. There are no egregious examples of source noise and no encode artifacts of note. One couldn't reasonably expect much better.
Sound design is kept simple in The Father. The film is almost entirely dialogue driven, and as the key element it plays with satisfying verbal definition and firm front-center placement. No complaints here. Light musical supports remain up front; there's very little surround activity, really if any at all, and even location specific sound elements, such as very light city din heard outside the flat, offer only cursory, yet still mood-critical, definition. There's really nothing more to it than that. It's as simple as it gets.
Sony's Blu-ray release of The Father includes a few extras, including a pair of featurettes, deleted scenes, and a trailer. No DVD or digital copies
are included with purchase. This release ships with a non-embossed slipcover.
The Father doesn't hold back. It's not concerned with audience coercion or trying to be cute by dancing around its subject. It's blunt, direct, and heartbreaking in its portrayal of dementia and the cost thereof to the one suffering from it and those trying to bear the burden of caring for the sufferer. At the same time, the film is beautiful in its construction, necessarily fractured and structurally confused as it may be. It's a remarkable example of the cinema craft at both its technical peak and its emotionally impactful best. Sony's Blu-ray delivers first-class video and audio. Supplements are on the thin side -- a commentary track or two, one more technical in nature and one, perhaps, from experts in the field of dementia -- would have been invaluable. Nevertheless, this release comes very highly recommended.
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