Thursday, June 19, 2008

Movie review: When Did You Last See Your Father?

It's a grim business, this dying.

By John P. Meyer

When Did You Last See Your Father?

Blake Morrison deals with his father Arthur's terminal illness and imminent death. Blake's memories of everything funny, embarrassing and upsetting about his childhood and teens are interspersed with the present, as he struggles to come to terms with his father, and their history of conflict, and learns to accept that one's parents are not always accountable to their children.

Source: Cinema Source

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It can come as little surprise to those familiar with their work that actors Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent turn in masterful, multi-layered acting performances in When Did You Last See Your Father?, the new film by Shopgirl director Anand Tucker. Standing a better chance to astonish is the equally impressive performance by young British TV actor Matthew Beard, who portrays the lead character of this autobiographical tale in his teenage years.

...Father is a reflection on rites of passage as seen through the eyes of poet/author Blake Morrison, whose difficult childhood resulted not from any want of worldly goods (his parents were both successful doctors) but rather from the overbearing, often emotionally abusive parenting approach practiced by his father - who commonly refers to young Blake as "Fathead."

While the story is told exclusively through Blake's eyes, it's far from a linear tale, as the viewpoint shifts periodically between Blake's child persona (Bradley Johnson), his teenage self (Mr. Beard) and the adult he survives to become (Mr. Firth).

We are first introduced, via Blake's most youthful persona, to his father Arthur's nefarious side. The family is stuck in a long line of cars awaiting entry to an auto racing venue. With no movement imminent and the first race about to begin, Arthur pulls the convertible out into the wrong-way lane and accelerates forward, using his medico's stethoscope to deflect the irate stares of those still waiting patiently in line. "Medical emergency!" he cheerily declares.

"Five minutes 'til showtime!"

Fast-forward to Blake's adult years, as he's prepping his tuxedo in a hotel room prior to delivering a literary award acceptance speech. Blake and his lovely wife Kathy (Gina McKee) decide they have just enough time for a quickie and have proceeded to the prone position when a knock at the door and Arthur's announcement of "five minutes 'til showtime!" put paid to all amorous impulses. This pattern of unannounced interruption is one that will be repeated - forward and back - over the course of Blake's life with his father.

But that life is nearing its end, we discover. Following a painful twinge experienced by the elder Morrison during a confrontational chandelier-raising, Arthur is diagnosed with terminal cancer. There's little modern medicine can do; he has only months - maybe just weeks - to live.

Thus much of the rest of the narrative stems from Blake's bedside vigil as his father embarks on the painful, debilitating, dehumanizing road toward dissolution.

Casting his thoughts back to (paradoxically) less traumatic times, Blake recalls a road trip he and his dad took into the rolling green hills of the English countryside during the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Blake (the teenage version) didn't want to go, as he's in the process of exploring the boundaries of the flirtatious relationship he's established with the family housekeeper (Elaine Cassidy, as Sandra). Furthermore, it's a stretch of days to be spent in the exclusive company of his father, whose emotional sparring knows no bounds. (It's small wonder the adult Blake continues to suffer from self-worth issues.)

Cutting donuts on the beach

Amidst the psychic torment doled out on their camping trip (Arthur blames Blake for forgetting the tent poles, and then later for siting their camp on the bed of a dry watercourse that turns watery when rain sets in), we begin to glimpse another side of the old rapscallion. He turns Blake loose behind the wheel of the family convertible and instructs him in the ways of cutting donuts. It's the first time we see the young man with a genuine smile on his face, and we're suddenly aware of the extent to which Arthur loves him, even though he has a laboriously difficult time expressing it.

We also get a glimpse of the gnawing suspicion that's been a part of Blake's existence since the day of a picnic years before when he caught his dad and a female family friend in a seemingly-compromising position. Blake thinks his father and Auntie Beaty (Sarah Lancashire) have been carrying on an affair for years, and he suspicions further that his mother (Juliet Stevenson) knows about it, and puts up with it.

Multi-faceted views of life

Director Tucker employs the device of split mirror images at various points to emphasize the faceted nature of our personalities, and the separate selves we become over the course of our lives. His time-looping cinematic narrative is a means of bringing several of those selves into focus, individualizing them in the process. There's extensive use of filtered lenses and scenes shot through glass panes, demonstrating in overt fashion that what we remember of the past - and even what we experience of the present - is colored and shaped by the overlay our personality paints it with.

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