Close Up (1996)

This short film was an overall creative success.

What starts off as a success story for a single mother living below the poverty line, slowly begins to weave itself into a tangled web of greed, guilt, and destruction.

It: Welcome to Derry proves you can have rich representation, real humanity, and still fully enjoy Pennywise terrifying kids in sewers.

With The Father, writer-director Florian Zeller- who wrote and developed the play upon which the film is based- pulls no punches as he confidently makes every effort to put the audience in the mind of someone whose grip on reality has all but vanished. It’s a dazzling testament to Zeller’s abilities as a director as he makes his first transition from stage to film appear as if he’s been working behind a camera his entire career. The dialogue he fashions with co-writer Christopher Hampton, along with the work of production designers Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone, collectively makes the downward spiral of dementia startlingly tangible, doing so in a way that can be comprehended by everyone except the person it directly affects.

Every movement becomes a question of identity. To become who we are meant to be. In order to reach that we often have to shed who we once were, and that shedding can sometimes be so brutal it’s ungraceful.