“Freud’s Last Session”- Analysis à Deux [MOVIE REVIEW]
Based on the original premise presented in an excellent play of the same name, playwright Mark St. Germain imagined a scenario in which a dying Sigmund Freud (83), now living in London, sees one last appointment, an Oxford English literature professor named C.S. Lewis (40). Not so much a psychoanalytic session but a meeting of the minds between a world famous atheist, Freud, and an Oxford don on the ascendency. Lewis a proponent of the existence of God or, as Freud would have it, an apologist. In the years to come, Lewis would embrace being a Christian apologist, the most famous of his era. Director and co-writer Matt Brown uses this meeting that may or may not have actually taken place to explore the history and ideology of both men.
Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode. Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
It is 1939. Sigmund Freud has cancer of the jaw and is in enormous pain; he will soon die. Relying solely on his daughter Anna, a highly regarded child psychoanalyst, he has her on a short leash, on call ministering to his pain. That Lewis is late for his appointment is a source of irritation to the master. (Note: this is an authorial liberty taken because no one would ever have been so rude as to be late to a meeting with one of the most famous men on the planet.) When he finally arrives, he explains that he was delayed by the trains, all of which are being used to evacuate children from London. Finally arriving at Freud’s house on Finchley Road he takes in his surroundings. Freud and Lewis immediately engage in a somewhat testy argument about “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” a seventeenth century Christian allegory by John Bunyun, a book Freud much admires and one, ironically, Lewis detests, having written a treatise against it called “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” the only work of Lewis’s Freud would have known. Essentially all of Lewis’s literature on Christianity and the existence of God would not begin for at least a decade.
Freud had only recently escaped Nazi Vienna and arrived in London, helped enormously by the world scientific community. To ease his psychological discomfort, Anna had his office furniture and mementos moved from their Austrian house and recreated, down to the smallest detail, in his new home. Lewis is fascinated with these features, which include the statue of a Catholic saint. But he hasn’t come to discuss Freud’s escape or the memorabilia of a lifetime; he’s there to talk about God and why Freud is so sure there isn’t one. Freud was equally transfixed with hearing why Lewis is so certain there is one; after all, Lewis had been an atheist earlier in life. Loss of his mother at an early age, life in a boarding school and service on the front lines during World War I all contributed to his loss of faith. Why the change of mind?
Anthony Hopkins. Photo credit: Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Brown uses the premise of a discussion to flashback to various important incidents in their past. Freud, it turns out, was the son of a strict religious father and raised by a very Catholic nanny, a recipe for disaster and confusion as young Freud intermingled the iconography of each religion—his religious father’s readings from the Torah and the nanny-taught sign of the cross. We learn less about Freud, besides the occasional referral to “mother figures,” “father figures” and masturbation. He does make mention that his atheism is based on science and scientific evidence where there is no room for the idea of a god. Why, Lewis wonders, is it that religion can make room for science but science cannot make room for religion? One of the many unanswered questions in this film.
Lewis, on the other hand, having abandoned a belief in a higher being, returned to God and Christianity after the trauma of World War I. Although still struggling with the concept of God, he made an about face during his Oxford years when he joined a literary group called “The Inklings” but especially under the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien, a colleague and fellow member. Reading theological texts also had an effect and he soon found himself an Anglican scholar writing on the subject of sin in “The Great Divorce,” “Letters to Malcolm” and “The Screwtape Letters,” all of which were written long after Freud’s death.
Freud is most interested in the salient incidents in Lewis’s life that may or may not have contributed to his embrace of something illogical and irrational. Freud concedes that people turn to religion in times of stress or personal tragedy but it doesn’t move him. A need for God is an excuse not to address the ills of the chaotic world. In essence they seem to be arguing the same point. For Freud, the belief in God is a substitute for refusing to address what is missing in one’s life. This, however, would also be Lewis’s argument. Neither will be moved by the other.
Matthew Goode. Photo credit Sabrina Lantos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Brown is less interested in the philosophical questions posed in the original play than he is in biographical portraits of both men, one at the end of life, the other with his greatest fame yet to come. The scales are tipped, however, in favor of Lewis with the preponderance of flashbacks of his earlier traumas shedding light on his present day situation. One in particular, his promise to a dying friend during the war that he would look after his mother, something he did and was still doing at the time of this visit, was of special psychological interest to Freud who saw in it so many of the “mother” and “Oedipal” issues he wrote about.
Freud’s weaknesses are also explored, especially those surrounding his co-dependency with Anna and his need to keep her close. Hinted at strongly was his interference in her personal outside relationships.
Like so many adaptations, it was necessary for me to cast aside my expectations and appreciate what Brown decided to focus on, the troubled background of Lewis in his atheist years and the emergence of Lewis as a major proponent of Christian thought. From the standpoint of biography, Brown’s approach is admirable because he has focused his story on September 3, 1939, specifically the day that England declared war on Germany and the future implications, and worked backwards to give us an idea of Lewis, the man of complex background and thought. Revelations about Freud and his background are much less illuminating.
Although I liked the film, I’m still uncertain of what Brown was trying to say. He was graced with two excellent actors. Here he has a formidable Anthony Hopkins as Freud with an almost imperceptible Germanic accent that doesn’t dominate the character and Matthew Goode as Lewis, restrained and appropriately agonized. Liv Lisa Fries plays Anna Freud with contradictory grace—contradictory because she is constantly at her father’s beck and call while trying to balance her own important career, and grace because as agonized as she is by their relationship and his impending death, she makes a valiant effort at maintaining her own career and relationships. Jodi Balfour as Dorothy Burlingham, is given little to do. She was Anna’s life partner and professional colleague, hinted at but never fully explored.
Although one comes away with a better understanding of who Lewis was, the portrait of Freud provides no more information than is readily available elsewhere. You will find yourself fascinated by the film when watching it but with the same feeling of emptiness that one experiences an hour after consuming Chow Mein.
Opening Friday December 22 at the Laemmle Royal.