This week on Layers of Adaptation Theatre is Freud’s Last Session (now on Netflix), a movie based on a stage production (of the same title) based on a book (The Question of God by Armand Nicholi) based on a hypothetical meeting-slash-debate between father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and author C.S. Lewis (who almost certainly never met, but, if you believe the movie’s postscript, maybe might have – who knows for sure?). Anthony Hopkins stars as the atheist Freud and Matthew Goode plays the devoted Christian Lewis, and, as World War II erupts across Europe, they engage in an ideological debate about Everything. The premise sounds fascinating in theory, but in execution? I’m not so sure.
The Gist: London, 1939. Two days prior, Hitler invaded Poland. The British citizenry is jittery, contemplating fleeing the country. Sigmund Freud (Hopkins) sends his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) to cover his academic lectures, for he is ill and most likely dying, suffering from the constant pain of oral cancer, the aftereffects of the surgery to treat it and the dental prosthetic placed in his jaw. He pours himself a whiskey and mixes it with a dropperful of morphine, and that’s how he gets through the next hour or three before he quaffs another frighteningly potent self-medication cocktail.
It’s hard to tell if Freud feels threatened by the looming war. He listens to the BBC’s news radio broadcasts almost dismissively, as if accepting that he may not be alive even to see the U.K.’s involvement. And then Lewis (Goode) arrives at Freud’s door. Freud summoned him for a meeting – Lewis, a writer of note who at this point in time has yet to pen his famous Narnia novels, publicly professed his abandonment of atheism for the tenets of Christianity. It’s not certain why Freud invites the debate, but one can assume that he sees in Lewis a fascinating psychology study, a patient who radically shifted ideology and is worthy of further prodding. Oh, and it seems that Lewis wrote a piece in which he spoofed Freud, not that Freud would ever admit he bothered to read it.
And so these men veer from prickly and combative to kind and affectionate as they explore their worldviews, which seem separated by a great yawning chasm, but sometimes overlap. Freud calls the belief in god an “obsessional neurosis,” while Lewis dismisses psychoanalytical theory as an exploration of everyone’s “latent perversion” – and then an air-raid siren goes off, and they hurry to the nearby church to huddle in its cellar, together with many others. Lewis suffers a panic attack, residual trauma from his time fighting in the trenches during World War I, and Freud calms him. Then the air raid is determined to be a false alarm, and they chuckle over the public announcement that follows: “Apologies – there are no bombs.”
As the two men spar, the narrative jumps back to moments when Lewis meets with J.R.R. Tolkien, or ends up being (deep sigh) a literal atheist in a foxhole. We also get a scene in which Freud was prompted to flee Vienna due to fascist rule, and a hallucinogenic sequence set moments after his jaw surgery. As they discuss sex and war and hatred and pain, Freud gets repeated phone calls and they occasionally turn on the radio to hear updates on the war. It seems Freud is addicted to morphine, and is desperate for Anna to find an open chemist to refill his prescription. Do Freud and Lewis become friends? Not easy ones, for sure, but when you share your strengths and vulnerabilities in equal measure, that’s a pretty good sign that they may end up on each other’s Christmas card lists.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: One what-if/could’ve-been critique: Streamline this narrative, and you might end up with a My Dinner with Andre between two cultural luminaries.
Performance Worth Watching: I occasionally grew annoyed by Hopkins’ purposeful affectations – hurried line readings, a frequent compulsive, almost forced, heh heh heh chuckle – but he never fails to be a consistently engaging and provocative performer in almost any role he takes.
Memorable Dialogue: A student questions Anna’s credentials as an academic:
Jerk: She’s not even a doctor. Why should I waste my time listening to her lecture?
Anna: You shouldn’t, Mr. Hensel. You’re absolutely right. You wouldn’t learn a thing. I’m sure you know all there is to know about adolescent narcissism.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: I assert that the My Dinner with Andre tack would’ve worked better than director Matt Brown’s conservative, middle-of-the-road approach. It seems as if the cutaways and flashbacks are contrived to render the film more visually dynamic than two men in a room talking, and they’re executed in a somewhat muddled and confusing fashion. Sometimes all you need is two heavyweights like Hopkins and Goode and some inspired dialogue, and you’ve got yourself a damn movie! But it’s as if Brown (who co-scripted with Freud’s Last Session playwright Mark St. Germain) don’t trust the material enough to let it be stripped-down and unconventional, or too off-puttingly dark despite its characters’ discussions of sex, death and suffering beneath the existential umbrella of war.
You also won’t be surprised to learn that Goode gets the short end of the stick as far as character goes. He’s an actor of some skill, but he’s not Sir Anthony Hopkins, because there’s only one Sir Anthony Hopkins, and when the biggest bear in Siberia roams, it’s going to eat first. There’s more dynamic to Freud, being a man in the final stretch of his life, who here gets to interact with his daughter and the “unhealthy paternal attachment” she has on her father. Hopkins almost seems to sense how staid the script can be, and digs in to make it interesting, indulging little performative flourishes as Freud needles Lewis like an analyst who’s off duty and out of bounds and knows it probably isn’t proper to ask him about his parents and his sex life, but does it anyway. But the actor’s attempts to enliven this structurally challenged and plodding screenplay aren’t enough to elevate Freud’s Last Session to a thoroughly engaging and provocative drama. When an atheist and a Christian sit down with the intent to debate, it shouldn’t be this dull.
Our Call: Strong premise, good cast, bland execution. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
