The Good, The Bad and the Brave

 

 

Three films with shared but not overlapping subject matter. One throwaway, one in-your-face,  one slow burner, all starring stars. The subject matter is dementia, and the different treatments bear some examination.

The throwaway is Supernova, with the very starry Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth, directed by somebody called Harry McQueen. If you are passionate about either of these actors, nostalgic about Prizzi's Honor or Pride and Prejudice, you could watch it, I suppose. There is no other reason to do so. It is, and I am speaking as one who is being restrained, mealy-mouthed, sentimental horseshit. Script? Stilted. Cinematography? Worthy of a commercial for a Ford Fusion. Pace? Glacial, snail-like, swampy. Characters? Unmemorable cardboard cutouts. Tucci plays an American novelist sweetly struck with Early Onset Alzheimers. Guess what? He can no longer write. Firth is his lifelong partner, a classical pianist who never practices. Stanley is alarmingly aware of his very cinematographic diagnosis, as the two trundle picturesquely around the English Lake District in a camper van, with Stanley having episodes of forgetfulness and lostness, and Colin being brave and stiff upper-lipped and not practicing for the recital he is due to give at the end of the Never-Ending Farewell Tour. They drop in Col's sis for a surprise birthday party for Col, organised by Stan in spite of the fact that he needs his shirt buttoned for him, Stan dispenses God-like bon mots about the stars to his niece, everybody has a jolly good time and wipes away a few tears, and away they go, to the annoyingly, pointlessly ambiguous dénouement. I hate pretty dementia crap, like Still Alice and those ads for memory-enhancing drugs. At their very best, these illnesses can teach those affected by them some life lessons that they would rather not have learnt, and most of their time they leave everybody involved at their very worst - afraid, panicked, sleepless, battling with bills and bureaucracy and the relentless, tangible degradation of what was once a functioning mind.

 

Or worse. Viggo Mortensen's Falling, with Lance Henriksen shows worse. Henriksen's character was an unpleasant, controlling, misogynistic bastard before he developed dementia, and the illness does not improve him. Apart from some touching scenes with his grand-daughter, the film shows relentlessly and accurately how deeply nasty dementia can be, how it skews everybody who comes into contact with it for good. Henriksen's performance, and his lost, angry look, is a masterpiece of accuracy. The film raises the question every caregiver asks themselves: "How much of this shit can I put up with?". To which the answer has to be "Much more than you think you can. Much, much more." Of course the question a caregiver should ask themselves is "How much of this shit should I put up with?" to which the answer is "God only knows." Viggo, playing Lance's son, puts up with a lot, and the film treats the inevitable clashes with delicacy and compassion. To me, every scene rang true as a bell. Sometimes I wondered if Viggo, who also wrote the script, was hunkering down unseen in a corner of the kitchen to witness some family scenes in which I had been an actor. Walking on eggshells is a phrase that barely even begins to convey the everyday tension of emotional and physical abuse within a family, and it is palpable here. When the incomprehensibility of abuse from a loved one morphs into a diagnosis of irreversible neurological degeneration, this is not an answer, but an endless series of questions. Is this why? When did it start? Why did it start? What could I have done differently? Better? Who am I after all this? And what is love? It can only be love that gives Viggo's son the strength to continue to take care of a tortured, complacent, self-centered father. The scenes with Lance's granddaughter show the flashes of redemption that enable the caregiver to continue stumbling along a path they both have and have not chosen. The film shows that above all, we, the caregivers, have to remember that the person with dementia (PWD in the dementia world) is the one who is ill. They are ill, dying of a terrifying disease, and in the name of human dignity deserve our love.

Florian Zeller's The Father is the slow burner. The film is a brave attempt supported by the magnificent acting of Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman, amongst others, to show from the inside the reality of losing one's mind neuron by neuron. As Hopkins crumbles, so do we. Characters and plotlines shift and change, and we are left not knowing any better than the poor old man what is real and what is not. The shift from bat-shit craziness to charming performance in the blink of an eye is particularly convincing. Dementia is a disease that gaslights the observer, but bad. How many caregivers have accompanied their loved one to a doctor's appointment having spent the journey, as I once did with my husband, assuring them that while I might not be his wife, I was a good friend of hers and happy to spend time with him, and that it didn't really matter that we were back in France as we drove into Boston, because we had changed the clocks before we left, only to have their much-less-loved-by-then one put on a stellar performance with the senior neurologist and his assistants, all polish, charm and utterly convincing fantasy? My only criticism of this movie would be that Hopkins' eyes were too bright, too intelligent, too lively. There is a sad, adrift, bewildered look in the eyes of a person losing their marbles that solicits an ocean of pity and a wish to care. Otherwise we just wouldn't.

The Father is probably the best of the three for those who are not intimately familiar with terminal neurodegenerative diseases if they are seeking an idea of what the fuss is all about. Falling is the best for those who have been burnt by the fire and are looking for a reminder of just how bad it was. And Supernova isn't good for anybody except those who want to feel good about giving a few quid to the Alzheimers Association.