A new film on the doctor is weak on the facts. But it marks a year in which we’ve turned to his theories to comprehend suffering – and to get treatment
Against the background of the always-on sonic leak of the BBC and Hitler’s promise to annihilate the Jewry of Europe, a new film, Freud’s Last Session, hopes to capitalize on a year in which Freud – and psychoanalysis – were resurrected.
The film opens with two pairings – the first, Freud and Freud: Anna (Liv Lisa Fries) teases her dying father, Sigmund (Anthony Hopkins), as he gets up from a nap on his couch. “The doctor lives,” jokes Anna, which, given the film’s title, we know won’t be true for long. Somewhere else in England, Janie Moore (Orla Brady), an older maternal figure, begs CS Lewis (Matthew Goode) to cancel his appointment and stay safely indoors. Both men push through their challenges – the jaw cancer that has made Freud’s life nearly unbearable, and the threat of bombs over Lewis’s train – to gather to debate the facticity of God.
