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It didn’t take long into the AFI World Premiere of Freud’s Last Session (directed by Matt Brown) to realize screenwriter Mark St. Germain adapted it from a stage play (one that he also wrote based on the book The Question of God, written by Armand Nicholi). So much of the dance of the film is in the battle of words and worlds of Sigmund Freud (played by Anthony Hopkins) and C. S. Lewis (played by Matthew Goode). In a similar vein to One Night in Miami, this is mostly a work of fiction taking what is known about the men and crafting the story from there. While One Night in Miami, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, Malcolm X, and Sam Cooke, all did actually spend the night together, it is unknown who Freud’s Last Session was with, only that it was with a young Oxford don, so Mark St. Germain took Armand Nicholi’s book which paired their philosophies against each other, and supposed what if they had met, what if C.S. Lewis was his last session?
I grew up knowing C.S. Lewis from the Narnia books so I knew him as a Christian, I did not know that he came to Christianity, that he had been an atheist, to me he was always the guy who represented God as Aslan the lion (according to my teachers, I don’t know if he explicitly stated his intention). That part was interesting and leaned in, especially since other writers have been reactionary to his work because of those same Christian themes it’s fascinating that he didn’t begin there and it was at Oxford, not even at the war, that he found religion. As great, and often funny, as the performances of Hopkins and Goode were, I think I would’ve enjoyed a film more that focused specifically on that journey because it is a fascinating transition.
The debate between the two gentlemen was articulate, often funny, and very well-acted. It was perfect theater, and a good showcase of these actors. They made it enjoyable even if you are not a person into theology. However, as slick as the dialogue and the debate were, I was way more drawn to the side stories. Be it the previously mentioned C.S. Lewis foray from atheist to devoted Christian, or Freuds’ second last day in Vienna when Anna Freud was taken by the Gestapo for 12 hours. It is perhaps a matter of taste, but also, these side stories were the aspects of the film that were the most inherently cinematic, whereas the dialogue was very theatrical.
I was fascinated with Anna (played by Liv Lisa Fries), Sigmund’s long-suffering daughter who has a brilliant mind of her own but is perpetually in his shadow, at his beck and call (multiple people in the film diagnose her with an attachment disorder), and pretends she’s not in a relationship with Dorothy (played by Jodi Balfour), even though they both know she is. I cringed every time they brought up homosexuality and lesbianism, not because they denied the existence, but because of what they would say the roots were, because they were psychologists, and it was 1939. I do enjoy that Jodi Balfour is starting to collect queer roles.
This was a World Premiere and yet of course the cast was not in attendance because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. While this film was presumably done on an Equity contract, it is good to see that while Equity actors must still do their work in their own country and can’t strike in solidarity there, they can choose the honor the picket line aboard.
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