Is there a God? What’s more likely, that an omnipotent being has created us in His/Her/Its image, and subtly guides the universe like a puppeteer, or that it’s all chaos, that we’re on a puny world in some jerkwater part of the universe, and when our dust mote existence terminates, it’ll happen with the same fanfare we give to a dust mote?

We can’t say, though we like to think we can with something approaching certainty. The question is too big and we’re too limited. I’ve had my own brushes with the divine. My grandmother, a devout Christian, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, the kind you don’t get better from. She prayed. She received support from her church. Her cancer just…went away. Is spontaneous cancer remission possible? Sure. Is it possible that God healed her? Sure, but that raises a host of thorny questions.*

Why didn’t God stop 9/11? Why didn’t God make Hitler a super nice guy? Why did God allow migrant children to drown in the Rio Grande? I’m nowhere near smart enough to attempt to answer those questions. You know who is? Why, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis! The hypothetical meeting between the father of psychoanalysis and the theologian/beloved creator of Narnia is explored in Freud’s Last Session, a film that’s equally entertaining and uneven.

In a cozy home in London, two events of historical importance happen simultaneously. The first is that World War II is beginning. The second is that Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) is ending. His oral cancer, caused by a lifelong habit of smoking,** will kill him. Before it does, it will cause him intense pain, and he mixes whiskey and morphine to make his last days more manageable. He’s also made a plan for his last day, and he carries with him the pill that will do the job. If nothing else, Freud is thankful he’ll never see another Hitler.

C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) also grapples with the coming war. It’s not his first war, and as a younger man he experienced the horrors of the trenches and No Man’s Land. Despite those nightmares and despite a lengthy flirtation with atheism, Lewis has embraced Christianity. It shows him a path forward, a way out of the darkness of his youth and the chaos looming in his future. 

“The Pilgrim’s Regress” is Lewis’ first book, and it’s made a splash for a number of reasons. One of them is a satirical character based on Freud. The old psychoanalyst invites the youngish Oxford professor for a visit, but we sense that the outspoken atheist Freud wants to test the mettle of the out and proud Christian Lewis.

So they talk. And talk. And talk. They delve into the existence of God – at least, that’s the initial plan. Truly, they dig into Freud’s wildly codependent relationship with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries), and his misgivings regarding Anna’s relationship with Dorothy (Jodi Balfour). There’s also Lewis’ World War I experiences, his deep friendship with fellow soldier Paddy Moore, and his possible romance with Paddy’s mother Janie (Orla Brady). Much is learned, much is understood, even more is discussed.

It will come as less than no surprise to you that director Matt Brown adapted Freud’s Last Session from Mark St. Germain’s successful play.*** As often happens when a play is developed into a film, a decent amount of padding has been added. Instead of just two guys jawing, we’ve also got some pretty good World War I sequences, a moment where Anna Freud is temporarily nabbed by the Gestapo, and flashbacks showing formative experiences in the lives of Lewis and Freud. Brown has made a handsome and well-paced film, particularly when his duo of lead actors intellectually joust. But I suspect that a nervous executive or producer demanded more “cinematic” sequences to prevent audience boredom.**** As a result, those sequences of padding often feel like padding, and more than once just as Freud and Lewis start to build up a head of intellectual steam, the film cuts away and is forced to build up momentum over and over.

Brown and St. Germain adapted the screenplay, and if you’re a budding screenwriter, this is an excellent example if you want to learn about effective characterization. The dialogue is always organic and specific to the characters, from the polite and reserved Lewis to the lecturing and borderline-narcissistic Freud. The script also tells us an enormous amount about these two men, both in what they say and what they don’t. By the conclusion, we have a good idea of what they believe, why they believe it, and how they feel about the other. Additionally, I liked the B-story focusing on Anna Freud. It digs into the codependent relationship with her father and her understandably secretive romance with Dorothy. 

While the supporting cast does strong work, the marquee names are Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode. I don’t mean to be snide, but Hopkins plays Freud essentially the way you’d expect Hopkins to play Freud. He shows us the towering intellect, the barely suppressed arrogance, the enormous flaws, and the touching humanity of Freud. It’s a good performance, but it’s the showier of the two. I think I liked Matthew Goode as Lewis a bit better. He’s quieter, more subtle, but not above unleashing the occasional bone-dry verbal barb. His Lewis recognizes the vast contradictions inherent within faith, and he struggles mightily to be the kind of man worthy of following Christ.*****

There are rumors that Lewis might have actually met Freud shortly before Freud took his own life. I like to think they did, and I like to think that within argument, these two polar opposites managed to slightly comprehend the incomprehensible. Freud’s Last Session digs into certainty, curiosity, and the enormous power of conversation.

 

*It bears mentioning that she eventually died from Alzheimer’s.

**Freud famously said that he smoked so as to avoid masturbation. The irony is not lost on me.

***There’s no way that a film this cerebral could have been developed in a studio. 

****If that’s truly the case, it’s madness. The only people who would see this film are the ones interested in the drama between these historical personages and their ideologies. I doubt that a bored husband would whisper, “Honey? When does Freud punch someone?”

*****Which would be a nice change of pace if the majority of American Evangelicals did the same thing.



Tim Brennan
Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.  
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