Founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud was Jewish, but an atheist. Author of Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis was a practicing Catholic. The former attempted to understand the human mind through science, while the latter viewed the world from a more spiritual perspective. Officially, the two great men never met. But if they had met, what would they have talked about? But of the existence or non-existence of God, of course! In any case, that’s what I imagine Freud’s Last session, by Matt Brown, where Anthony Hopkins slips into the skin of Freud. Exclusively, The dutyspoke with the director as well as Matthew Goode, who played CS Lewis.
The film is based on a play by Mark St. Germain, itself based on a book by Armand Nicholi.
“The play is quite incredible: the themes it deals with immediately hooked me. However, I took the time to mature the adaptation, which was beneficial for me,” recalls Matt Brown, whose previous The Man Who Knew Infinityabout the life of mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan, was also adapted from a play dominated by two characters.
Hence this need for a step back before writing the screenplay. A script which, once written, amazed Matthew Goode.
“It is rare to be offered such a project at the cinema. We actors like roles that have breadth, height, and that are a real challenge. In every respect, it is difficult to do better than these two scores. Plus, since these are real people who have written a lot and about whom a lot has been written, it made research easier at the preparation stage — I love research,” explains Matthew Goode, seen as a psychopathic uncle In Stokerby Park Chan-wook, and as a vampire geneticist in the series A Discovery of Witches.
By his own admission, Matthew Goode was as excited as he was nervous at the prospect of playing opposite the giant that is Anthony Hopkins. What’s more, knowing, as film buffs will surely remember, that the latter himself has already played CS Lewis in the magnificentShadowlands (The universe of shadows), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award for best actor.
“It was the elephant in the room,” agrees Matthew Goode. Tony looked great in Shadowlands ; This is one of my favorite performances. So, yeah, I wondered if it would intimidate me while filming. And then I realized that it actually served the dynamic between Freud and Lewis in the film perfectly. Because Lewis is intimidated by Freud for a good part of the story. There was an interesting form of mise en abyme there. »
By 1939, Lewis had certainly published a few books, but not the immensely popular Chronicles of Narnia, as Matthew Goode notes. Lewis was, at the time, best known in academic circles as a professor at Oxford.
What’s more, you should know that in 1939, Freud was dying. Exiled to England to escape Nazi persecution in Austria, he was indeed suffering from very advanced oral cancer – which he quickly revealed to his guest.
In short, all this easily explains Lewis’s reverence towards his renowned elder, even when expressing deep ideological disagreements.
To open or not to open
We know that when transposing a play to cinema, the first question that arises is that of the direction: to open or not to open the action? Decompartmentalizing or preserving theatricality? Not only did Matt Brown decide to “leave” Freud’s London house during a walk interrupted by a possible bombing, but he also added a plethora of flashbacks.
Which flashbacks are made up of reminiscences that echo the content of the current discussion (which does not only concern God, far from it). We thus visit a mysterious forest – and symbolic, it goes without saying – with a child Freud, the trenches of the First World War with a Lewis barely out of adolescence, etc.
On the periphery, there is also Anna, Freud’s daughter, herself a brilliant psychoanalyst…
However, even when we remain in the confinement of Freud’s residence, the action is never static. Matt Brown explains: “This constant movement was essential, not only to avoid boredom, but also for the actors. Tony sometimes had pages of monologue to deliver… And then, all this dialogue between Matthew and him also had to be motivated by gestures, by a particular object seen or manipulated, etc. I rehearsed each scene with them to determine the movements, but as I did so, new ideas came to me. For example, one evening, I rewatched the adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?), by Mike Nichols, and there’s this scene on the staircase, and suddenly I said to myself: “Hey, what if there was a staircase at Freud’s house in such and such a place?” So we modified the decor to build one. It made possible this moment that I love, when Freud disappears at the top of the stairs: left alone at the bottom, Lewis finally displays his annoyance. »
A powerful actor
From questions to counter-arguments, sometimes with a hint of derision, Freud does not spare Lewis. On set, however, the dynamic between Matthew Goode and Anthony Hopkins was very different: an experience that the former will never forget.
“The important thing in such a sustained face-to-face situation is to listen to your partner, to be on the lookout, open, so that this essential complicity develops between the two of you Tony, it was such a privilege… Don’t forget he’s in his eighties… What he accomplishes in this film, the power that emanates from him…”
And the two characters confront each other, politely, with all respect, but firmly. Although, even if important personal convictions separate Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis, other values unite them. Starting with an obvious humanism, so necessary while around them, a great darkness falls on Europe…
Matthew Goode concluded: “Even knowing that it is very unlikely that such an encounter took place, there is something fascinating about seeing this atheist man at the end of his life debating with the one of the greatest Christian apologists there is. And given the state of the world, it seems to me that this conversation is timely. »
The film Freud’s Last Session will be on display on January 12.