Sightlines · reception

How The Father was received

2020 · Florian Zeller · The Father on Sightlines

The arc

Acclaimed from its Sundance 2020 debut, but Hopkins's Oscar win was initially overshadowed by the ceremony chaos around it — five years on, the noise has faded and the film has settled in as the definitive dementia movie, with the win now widely seen as earned on pure merit.

What’s debated

Film Twitter still relitigates the 2021 Best Actor race — was Hopkins's win a deserved career-capper or did the Academy rob Chadwick Boseman's posthumous moment?

Its footprint

It's forever tied to the most anticlimactic Oscars ending in memory: producers moved Best Actor to close the show, Hopkins won instead of Boseman and was asleep in Wales, and the ceremony just... stopped. Meanwhile 'I feel as if I'm losing all my leaves' became the line reviewers can't stop quoting.

Where it stands

A Letterboxd staple of 'emotionally devastating' lists — the film people dare each other to watch, then warn each other about.

Did you know? Zeller wrote the role for Anthony Hopkins before he'd ever met him — the character is even named Anthony and gives Hopkins's real birthdate, December 31, 1937, in the film.