Anthony Hopkins as “Freud” in the cinema: Faith, a fairy tale

Strange that a drama that covers such big topics and pits two important figures of the 20th century in an exchange of blows can be so lacking in tension.

British director Matthew Brown has transformed Mark St. Germain’s play Freud’s Last Session into an overly polished chamber piece set in London at the start of World War II.

A stubborn egocentric

The 86-year-old actor Anthony Hopkins embodies the neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis with latent overacting as a stubborn egocentric. His Sigmund Freud no longer acts at the peak of his mental and physical powers and still fires off one song after the other. Especially when it comes to Freud’s criticism of religion and belief in God, which he calls the “Fairytale of Faith”.

His opponent, CS Lewis, is still as well known in Great Britain today as Sigmund Freud was in Austria back then. Not primarily for the numerous Christian writings that the Oxford professor and former atheist wrote. But for the “Narnia Chronicles”, a seven-volume fantasy novel series for children in which you enter a mythical adventure world through a closet.

He is portrayed by Matthew Goode, who has so far stood out less for his character roles than for his impeccable demeanor as an arrogant nobleman in “Downtown Abbey”. As Hopkins’ counterpart, Goode seems overwhelmed.

Anthony Hopkins himself once played a much more charismatic CS Lewis in Richard Attenborough’s great melodrama “Shadowlands” in the 1990s. In “Freud – Beyond Faith” he and the script make the Christian apologist and friend of JRR Tolkien look pretty pale by giving him far too few punchlines.

Freud’s question to Lewis, “Why should I take Christ’s claim to be God more seriously than that of my patients who claimed to be Jesus?” is just one of the original interjections of the religionist Freud that Lewis made at this fictitious meeting on March 3rd. September 1939 in the London home of the exiled Freud can hardly be parried.

He rules out that the Gospels are myths, says Lewis: “They are not artistic enough, but rather clumsily written.” If someone had wanted to create a legend, they would not have allowed such a bad narrative, the scholar is convinced.

As far as the visual level is concerned, “Freud – Beyond Faith” relies entirely on the dialogic chamber play situation in Freud’s study. It is interrupted by flashbacks into the memories of the disputants, which – after all, it is about psychoanalysis – goes back to the childhood traumas of Freud and Lewis. Lewis is scarred by his time at boarding school and his military service in the First World War. Freud suffers from the loss of his home in Vienna, is terminally ill and addicted to morphine.

Liv Lisa Fries als Anna Freud

The historically proven dependency relationship between daughter Anna Freud, also a psychoanalyst, and her father comes into play on a further level. Liv Lisa Fries asserts herself in the role of the caring daughter who cannot escape his dominance. Freud, the great interpreter of sexual longings, meets her love for a colleague with rejection and ignorance. Anthony Hopkins plays Freud’s character deficiencies that become visible with his tried and tested uptight taciturnity.

Discussing questions about God and meaning before the chaos of war that breaks into the scholar’s hermitage through radio reports gives “Freud – Beyond Faith” height to fall. Nevertheless, when watching Matthew Brown’s conventional production, instead of utmost urgency, only sleepy indifference sets in. The director’s intended learning effect for the present, that people can have different opinions and still respect each other, only comes about reluctantly.