Rent Freud's Last Session (2023)

A waste of time - Freud's Last Session review by CH

This is a rotten film, seemingly written by someone who understands neither Christianity nor Freud's work in psychoanalysis. Freud is portrayed as a bumbling old fool with bad manners and Lewis as a weak sentimentalist with no intellectual vigour. Neither of these portrayals could be further from the truth. Whoever wrote the dialogue can have had little understanding of the philosophical issues involved- indeed there was little real discussion at all, just a lot of rather immature giggling from Freud and some rueful grimaces from Lewis. There was one detail- if it was really the case that Freud allowed his daughter Anna to be arrested instead of him, then that was a despicable act and unworthy of any man, atheist or believer. If this really happened, and I hope it didn't, Freud is not fit to be considered as a humane person at all.

Interesting Drama - Freud's Last Session review by GI

Adapted from a stage play this is a robustly performed film although not particularly profound but interesting all the same. This is a fictional What If? scenario that dramatises a meeting between a dying Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) and C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) where they debate each other mainly over the existence or not of God. Freud is an exile in London having fled the Nazi takeover of Austria and the film is set on the eve of the Second World War. It's an old fashioned drama with Freud depicted as cantankerous and somewhat childish old man who gets quite angry over challenges to his ideas and Lewis is a supercilious academic suffering from PTSD after his experiences in the First World War. There's a series of flashbacks and dream sequences that extend the film and render it watchable provided you are committed to the subject matter. The heart of the film is in Freud's relationship with his gifted daughter Anna (Live Lisa Fries) who is at his beck and call but is her own person. Not a particularly memorable film but elaborately and seriously presented.

Flawed, Wordy, Stagey, Imagined Reality Film of Something that Never Happened - Freud's Last Session review by PV

This is based on a stage play, unsurprisingly - its attempt to use fantasy elements cannot get away from the wordy stagey origins.

Thing is, this is what I call IMAGINED REALITY. at the end the captions tell us about Freud and CS Lewis, and then state an unknown Oxford Don visited Freud in 1939 - from that, this was constructed by a playwright Mark St Germain to debate faith and belief really. All fine for what it is but probably more suited to the theatre actually.

Tony Hopkins cruises and never quite convinces as Freud - maybe someone could have taught him how to pronounce German words authentically.

It is what it is. I have no idea if the female characters, daughter etc, feature a lot in the stage play, but it seems this is an attempt to woke up the film, as with SO many these days that shoehorn women characters into plots, always as 'strong and independent' women of course... And we even have here one of the 6000 black people who lived in the UK in 1939. What a coincidence.

A rainy afternoon film, not offensive in the least to me but then I am not a worshipper of any religion so even the nonsense woowoo of the Da Vinci Code does not trigger me.

Passable, so 3 stars.