15/38
Anthony Hopkins had previously played CS
Tale
French psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud invites Professor C.S. Lewis to discuss the existence of God, Freud’s unique relationship with his daughter, and Lewis’s unconventional relationship with his best friend’s mother. Lewis in Zemlja Sjena (1993) 30 years before this film. Lewis is shown researching the Gospels while a woman who appears to be his wife beckons him to bed. This film is set in 1939, but Lewis did not marry Joy Davidman Gresham until 1956. The woman was actually Janie Moore, with whom Lewis lived until 1949.
Variations on an original theme, op
[last lines] Sigmund Freud: From error to error we discover the whole truth. Featured in the 7PM Project: April 19, 2024 episode (2024). 36, “Enigma” Variation 9: Nimrod Composed by Edward Elgar Performed by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Adrian Leaper (conductor) Courtesy of Naxos Music UK Ltd. Hopkins playing Freud was doomed to failure. Unfortunately, he delivers one of his familiar and overly mannered performances here. Each time this “Freud” opens his mouth, he speaks in the same rapid, slightly eccentric rhythm that Hopkins prefers.
I doubt Freud was quite so over the top
Then he stops, thinks for a moment, suddenly breaks into a rueful smile and emits a chuckle or laugh. This has been Hopkins’s standard style throughout his career (at least when he’s not playing Lecter), this time in a Viennese accent. My faith was also shaken early in the film when, for no apparent reason, the order of two famous events is reversed. On September 3, 1939, Prime Minister Chamberlain announced on the radio that the nation was at war with Germany. A few minutes later, air raid sirens sounded, terrifying the people of London. (It turned out to be a false alarm.) For some reason, the film features the fake air raid that preceded the declaration of war.
Also, given that C
It also features, in connection with Chamberlain’s show, an old pet peeve of mine: a large group of psychologists listen to his historic radio address, and when it ends, the BBC presenter says something like, “That finishes the Prime Minister.” message” – at which point someone (is it Anna Freud?) turns off the radio. No one would do that in real life, when war has just been declared and urgent government announcements have yet to be made (and there have been many). Another criticism: the clumsy way in which flashbacks are inserted into the narrative, giving us the stories of Freud, Lewis and Anna, with a heavy emphasis on Anna’s lesbianism. S. Lewis was one of Britain’s most brilliant orators – eloquent, persuasive, never at a loss for words – he is unusually quiet, shy and hesitant in this film, even for someone being polite to a revered, dying old man. Armand Nicholi’s extravagant book The Question of God, one of the inspirations for this film, allows the two iconic characters to clash, with Lewis (and God) eventually gaining the upper hand.
It’s all just Freud’s spectacle
But in the film version of this imaginary encounter, Lewis has little to say. At least the film is well edited; It’s nice to see what Freud’s office must have looked like. That said, I don’t see the point of the film. Is this just to give Hopkins the opportunity to do another bad portrayal of a historical figure?
