Freud's Last Session (2023)

A New Year and despite the cold and ice, a tremendous full house for our community cinema. Freud’s Last Session (2023) was adapted from a stage play and directed by Matthew Brown. It depicts a fictional meeting between Sigmund Freud, played by Anthony Hopkins and CS Lewis (Matthew Goode), just days after the outbreak of World War II.

We were disappointed by the film, but this led to a great discussion. Some of us felt that the tensions expressed between the two men were manufactured by the director – a few felt it was like an internet “copy and paste job”. The pro Christian/atheist arguments were “superficial and bland” and did not reflect the perception of the time.  We hoped that Freud and Lewis’s exchanges would go to another level, but their discussion was full of clichés and banal.

We found the portrayal of Freud to be very dismissive and patronising, with the conversation between the lead characters conveying “low level antagonism.”  Hopkins gave a strong portrayal – although we weren’t sure about his accent – which perhaps left Goode in the shade.

Anna Freud (played by Liv Lisa Fries) was perhaps the most fascinating character of all, challenging the supremacy of Freud’s ideas.  A child psychology pioneer, her ideas on separation had an impact on children arriving to UK by the Kindertransport. A brief scene of her in a Nazi prison cell was powerful and lit beautifully. We also talked about the strange absence of Freud’s wife from the film and why this might be.

The interesting idea was expressed that the film was true to our AI era nowadays, with people not really engaging deeply with each other.  Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal (1957) was recommended as a film that better communicated ideas about life, death and the existence of God.

We look forward to more films to challenge and delight us in 2026. Thanks to Eugene and the volunteers for all they do to create such a successful, thought-provoking and welcoming place to be.

Anne