Analyse this: An imagined conversation between CS Lewis (Matthew Goode) and Freud (Anthony Hopkins). Photo / supplied
Analyse this: An imagined conversation between CS Lewis (Matthew Goode) and Freud (Anthony Hopkins). Photo / supplied
Film review: Freud’s Last Session falls into the potentially awkward genre of “historical fantasy” with its imagined all-afternoon conversation between two real people: Narnia author CS Lewis (portrayed by Matthew Goode from Downton Abbey) and the grandfather of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins, who played Lewis in 1993′s Shadowlands).
Setat Freud’s North London home in September 1939, these two impressive and diametrically opposed minds discuss and argue (mostly) good-naturedly about the views that helped shape contemporary Christian and psychological thought throughout the second half of the 20th century.
Acolytes may baulk at watching a situation that is technically fiction, but apparently an unnamed Oxford scholar did visit the elderly Freud on the eve of World War II. Mark St Germain’s play (adapted for the screen by St Germain and director Matthew Brown) posits an illuminating and often entertaining battle of wits between the psychologist and the Christian apologist. “He’s got a lot to apologise for,” growls Freud the atheist.
Both leads are terrific. With the indefatigable Anthony Hopkins as the Viennese tough cookie and posh-Brit Goode as the gentler Lewis, the inevitably theatrical aspects of a talky screenplay are alleviated by strong, engaging performances.
Throughout, Goode’s wary scholar stands virtually still as Hopkins’ bolshy antagonist bustles about him, swigging morphine to stem the pain of his advanced mouth cancer, and constantly phoning his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) to insist she desert her own academic job to bring him medicine.
The cinematic pitfalls of watching two men talking in one room are dealt with by cuts to Anna at work and frequent flashbacks to each man’s life story. It’s a serviceable device but it does offer some fascinating insights, so the film’s ideal audience is perhaps those who maybe know a little about Lewis’s novels and later-life passionate advocacy for Christian solace but will still be intrigued to learn about his surprising personal life.
Similarly, while we all think of Freud as the sex-obsessed neurologist, we may be unnerved to learn that he was his own daughter’s analyst as she struggled with disallowed sexual instincts.
Freud’s Last Session shares similarities with Brown’s well-regarded 2015 drama The Man Who Knew Infinity, about Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan (Dev Patel), and his friendship with his Cambridge mentor, Professor GH Hardy (played by Jeremy Irons).
This film should find a wider audience with its better-known subjects and a roaring Hopkins in the frame. The bigger issue will be whether purists can accept that the gentlemen’s charming interaction might all be completely made up.
Rating out of five: ★★★½
Freud’s Last Session, directed by Matthew Brown, is in cinemas from tomorrow (May 30).
