Before Silence of the Lambs made him a "movie star," Anthony Hopkins turned in a number of intelligent and nuanced performances. The Good Father is one of them. For one thing, it is the only movie I know of that hints at the impulse to filicide, unwilled, by no means perverse, but nevertheless the acknowledgment that one's child has contributed to one's doom. It comes to Hopkins' character in dreams. They disturb him terribly. One should simply not feel like that.
But in the picture's very last shot, a flashback, where Hopkins watches his wife stroke her swollen stomach with tears streaming from her eyes, it becomes clear that the child will become and has become the end of them. "You were the love of my life," he tells her after the child is born and they are separated.
Paralelling his own situation is another Brit's. Hopkins takes up with a man who is distraught because his wife has left him (for another woman) and is planning to take their son. Hopkins' character supports and subsidizes his new friend in his efforts to beat this man's wife in court. The man wins, compromises out of court with his wife to see his son, and spurns Hopkins' purported help with contempt. Hopkins loses.
A superb study of a rarely looked at human complexity.
But in the picture's very last shot, a flashback, where Hopkins watches his wife stroke her swollen stomach with tears streaming from her eyes, it becomes clear that the child will become and has become the end of them. "You were the love of my life," he tells her after the child is born and they are separated.
Paralelling his own situation is another Brit's. Hopkins takes up with a man who is distraught because his wife has left him (for another woman) and is planning to take their son. Hopkins' character supports and subsidizes his new friend in his efforts to beat this man's wife in court. The man wins, compromises out of court with his wife to see his son, and spurns Hopkins' purported help with contempt. Hopkins loses.
A superb study of a rarely looked at human complexity.