Freud's Last Session * * ½

 

Go on, say something clever - or at least not boring.

Apparently this was a novel, and then it became a stage play, and now it's a film.  Maybe all those mutations is the reason it lost its mojo. 

The story has it, that in September 1939, writer CS Lewis (Matthew Goode) visited Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) at his London home, where Freud also ran his practice.  

CS Lewis did not visit Freud for psycho analysis so much as to have a bit of a chin wag about the existence of God. 

The irony is, they even admit themselves that arguing about the existence of God is pointless as humankind has been doing it for ever and will continue to do so. No definitive answer will ever come from people. It'll only come from God - or not.

So you have to wonder, why do these two intellectuals want to talk about it? For our entertainment I suppose.  And it might be entertaining except it never happened and everything they say is made up by someone else.  Someone not as smart as Freud or CS Lewis.

Chatting away in Freud's "den", the claustrophobia is broken up by flashback memories of earlier incidents in their lives.  Incidents that made them form their current convictions.  

It also runs another story that is happening at the same time. This is the story of Anna, Freud's daughter, and her becoming established as a lecturer on psychoanalysis, along with getting frustrated with the woman who is to be her lifetime partner. She also has to buy some medicine for Dad and, wouldn't you know it, the pharmacist is closed! Pretty busy afternoon for Anna.

In the meantime the bombing has started in London for a war that hasn't quite been announced yet. (In fact there are more than a few incidents which are historically incorrect but never mind that). 

It's got a couple of meaningful and insightful moment like CS having a nervous fit during a bombing raid and being helped through by Sigmund and later Sigmund's choking on his own blood and dentures due to oral cancer and being helped by CS.  Yes, we get it.

But if you think about it, we're dealing with stuff like Oedipal and Electra complexes, man's hostility to man, the existence of God, the existence of evil, original sin, why do the innocent suffer? And a truck load of other issues.  

And they still make it boring. That's quite an achievement.