Freud’s Last Session

Grade: C

Sigmund Freud had a way with words, and Freud’s Last Session has a few funny and/or smart lines that might reduce a lazy movie critic to quoting a few of their favorites. In a scene where he’s articulating how ridiculous he thinks it is that religious people are told not to have sex until marriage, he has quite the analogy. He says it’s like recruiting a boy to play in a renowned symphony orchestra, when the only other times he’s played with his piccolo were in the bedroom by himself.

21 years after playing C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, Anthony Hopkins stars in Freud’s Last Session as Sigmund Freud, who has a series of meetings with Lewis. It’s 1939, in newly war-torn London. The movie notes at the end that in the last days of Freud’s life, he met with an unidentified Oxford don. It’s possible that was Lewis, but we will never know. The movie is a fictional account of what Freud and Lewis might have talked about if they got together – and maybe they did. Lewis has an intriguing theory in favor of God and Jesus being real. He says we don’t know much about Jesus’s life and upbringing. If the Bible is fictional, written by a series of authors, leaving all that out would be some incomplete, irresponsible storytelling there.

I wonder how much longer 86-year-old Hopkins will be around, so I’m trying to appreciate each and every moment he’s still here, doing his thing for us. This mentality got set in motion especially after The Father, for which I wanted him to win the Oscar, and he did. 45-year-old Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey, Watchmen) as C.S. Lewis has nice chemistry with Hopkins, as they discuss, analyze, and verbally spar. Hopkins as Freud observes that of all the things people share with others, what’s most interesting is what they choose not to tell. And what it might be. And why.

If you liked Origin, then Freud’s Last Session will be right up your alley. Both are deep, heavy, cerebral explorations into philosophy, religion, race, and the like. They require more attention than your typical cinematic experience. Personally, I wondered if I was at the movies or at school, listening to a lecture. No matter how good that lesson may be, I’d prefer to be anywhere other than a classroom.

Freud’s Last Session is probably a better play than a movie (and it is based on one), but even as a play, I wouldn’t be crazy about it the first time. I’d have to read and/or see it a few times to get and appreciate it more and more. But would I really want to? These reviews are based on the first impression I get. As a film, it never launches. Maybe one day, if I’m all caught up with my movie watching and I get bored enough, I’ll revisit Freud’s Last Session, and it will land better with me. But for now: next!

Grade: C