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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2016 23:09:08 GMT
Absolutely - dementia takes different courses in different patients. I think perhaps reviews and to some extent word of mouth were a bit misleading in maybe suggesting 'if you have experience of a loved one having this condition, you will totally connect with this play!' I think she was also slightly nonplussed by the script having something along the lines of, 'But don't you remember we talked about this, dad?' She was absolutely clear that anyone who cared for a dementia patient would NEVER say something like that to them!
A. The daughter is not a professional nurse who knows "procedure" and this line is spoken before her father's condition has deteriorated.
B. The play attempts to explore the disease from the POV of the victim. Unless your friend actually has Alzheimer's she won't really know what it's like, will she?
It seemed to me he was already deteriorating when the play began...? My friend isn't a medical professional either, but she nursed her mother, who has dementia, over a long period, so I think she's entitled to her opinion over whether that line would be believable from a child to a parent in that situation. Not too sure what you mean by point B, but while we might be seeing certain things from the POV of the father, weren't there also scenes with just the daughter and her partner? Though - no joke intended! - it may be my memory at fault here. |
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Post by Hamilton Addict on Apr 16, 2016 20:46:50 GMT
A. The daughter is not a professional nurse who knows "procedure" and this line is spoken before her father's condition has deteriorated.
B. The play attempts to explore the disease from the POV of the victim. Unless your friend actually has Alzheimer's she won't really know what it's like, will she?
It seemed to me he was already deteriorating when the play began...? My friend isn't a medical professional either, but she nursed her mother, who has dementia, over a long period, so I think she's entitled to her opinion over whether that line would be believable from a child to a parent in that situation. Not too sure what you mean by point B, but while we might be seeing certain things from the POV of the father, weren't there also scenes with just the daughter and her partner? Though - no joke intended! - it may be my memory at fault here. Different people would deal with the situation of a father with dementia differently, perhaps at this point she really wasn't sure how to handle it. I went away from the play thinking it was from Andre's POV, but now that I think about it, your right, they did have scenes without the father. Not really sure there's an answer to this confusion, unless you ask the writer. |
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Post by mallardo on Apr 16, 2016 21:35:18 GMT
I think the writer's idea was to sew confusion in our minds - up to a point - allowing us to enter into the father's confusion. The scenes without the father are as skewed and puzzling (to us) as the scenes with him. The tone doesn't change.
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Post by Steve on Apr 17, 2016 23:22:37 GMT
I went away from the play thinking it was from Andre's POV, but now that I think about it, your right, they did have scenes without the father. Not really sure there's an answer to this confusion, unless you ask the writer. I think of it like an Agatha Christie mystery. (1) At first, you see it from Andre's point of view, so you get the benefit of the unique insight into his experience; (2) But then, the writer doesn't want to torture his audience, so he changes approach, and resolves the storyline. I would have preferred for the storyline not to be resolved, and just to stick with Andre's confusion, but then I think you'd have walkouts and annoyed audience members, and alot of people who get a lot from the show, wouldn't. So, maybe pleasing my appetite for something a bit more outre would have been a mistake. |
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Post by Nicholas on Apr 18, 2016 0:05:21 GMT
I went away from the play thinking it was from Andre's POV, but now that I think about it, your right, they did have scenes without the father. Not really sure there's an answer to this confusion, unless you ask the writer. I think of it like an Agatha Christie mystery. (1) At first, you see it from Andre's point of view, so you get the benefit of the unique insight into his experience; (2) But then, the writer doesn't want to torture his audience, so he changes approach, and resolves the storyline. I would have preferred for the storyline not to be resolved, and just to stick with Andre's confusion, but then I think you'd have walkouts and annoyed audience members, and alot of people who get a lot from the show, wouldn't. So, maybe pleasing my appetite for something a bit more outre would have been a mistake. That’s my huge, huge, irreconcilable issue with this. As is so often the case, Steve, you’ve said nigh on exactly what I felt, but (I can’t remember what you thought of this, your review probably lost in the grip of theatermania’s evil clutches) I found that ease of approach, that unwillingness to follow through, that resolution, that was why this play really, really, really angered me. On the way out, yes, there were plenty of teary people, and what with Cranham’s tremendous performance (well deserved Olivier) I was one of them, but it ended up as much about its construction as about its emotion. As you say, it was a mystery, but one I saw through my eyes. I wasn't immersed in Andre's confusion, I was immersed in Zeller's mystery. I wasn't Andre, I was Poirot. I was impressed not by how I saw the world through Andre’s eyes, but I saw the mystery of Andre’s perspective through my eyes, connecting dots, drawing conclusions, and eventually getting the resolution I so craved so I could skip out of the Tricycle and get on with my comfortable life. It was a mystery, and like every good mystery the clues were there for me to solve and the answer came at the end. But dementia isn’t a mystery, and even half way through I felt uneasy about how Zeller was playing with us, offering us as audiences hints Andre didn’t have and giving us the benefit of real clarity around the corner. It wasn’t immersive. It was smug.
That’s why I thought Here We Go was devastatingly brilliant in every way this wasn't. Other than the fact that it has to end with blackout, applause and we all troll off, that final twenty minutes offered no explanation and no comfort and no relatabiltiy and no answer. If we empathised with Godfrey, we empathised with a meaningless meandering existence we don’t even control, damned to a Sisyphean torture that’s all too real. If we didn’t empathise with Godfrey, we became the relatives who cast him off and turn him into trite anecdotes – unempathetic, uncomfortable to acknowledge his discomfort, understanding his decline through our own secure position. I found that a far more cruel way of exploring this, yet far more real.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I thought this ended up being about how smart Florian Zeller was, as much as it was about how cruel dementia was. We had Visitors a year or two ago, where in naturalistically showing an almost Alan Bennett parody of a scene then showing the very early stages of a mental decline from four clear perspectives, the inhumanity of dementia was unbearably shown, its naturalism and recognisability its secret weapon as Norris’ authorial voice came second to Norris’ beautiful, unbearably relatable characters (for my money Visitors is the best new play of the last five years). Then we had Here We Go, with a very self-conscious stagecraft which nonetheless used Beckettian mime and allegory to really envelop us in dementia in full flow, forcing a response that’s far more instinctive than intellectual. The Father was neither fish nor fowl, superciliously cleverer than a naturalistic drama yet far archer in construction than Churchill’s deliberately divisive technique. Perhaps it’s me, but I felt very, very uncomfortable with how comfortable Zeller made me with this play. Perhaps that’s its genius – it depicts dementia with some modicum of the reality of the confusion it causes, but gives some sense of a conclusion for us, some catharsis then closure. But I don’t think that’s honest, or at least I think its closure was too arch and clever (Visitors has closure, but I’m glad I don’t have to see Bassett’s character now two years on). Perhaps this is a grander conversation about how comfortable theatre should be on any topic. On this it felt not just uncomfortably soft-touch, but very uncomfortably show-offy. I realise I'm a lone voice in disliking this, and I really didn't hate this by any means (probably three stars), but I could not get on with how this showed off.
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Post by bordeaux on Jan 28, 2020 11:15:30 GMT
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Post by intoanewlife on Jan 28, 2020 11:16:02 GMT
Can't wait to see the film. Though the play absolutely devastated me. Frank Langella was absolutely brilliant in this.
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Post by Dr Tom on Jun 20, 2021 21:06:50 GMT
Just saw the film tonight and thought it was excellent. Very different to what I was expecting. I didn't get to see this in the theatre, but wish I had done now.
It held my attention all the way through and, despite most of the audience being unwilling to wear their masks (which was equally true when I walked through Westfield to get to the cinema), they were well behaved. Only one phone went off. Not too long either, only about 90 minutes (plus trailers).
It doesn't seem like this is being shown all that often, but well worth catching. Quite a masterclass in acting from everyone involved.
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Post by mkb on Jun 23, 2021 15:54:19 GMT
Maybe it was because I have seen the play and knew what to expect, but I didn't find the film anywhere near as disorientating. It actually felt quite ordered, and therefore didn't have the same impact. Couldn't fault the performances, but a five-star play has become a four-star film I feel.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 23, 2022 20:28:34 GMT
The film is on Netflix at the moment. I'm of the age where people I know well are developing / have died with dementia so I found it very depressing viewing, though I've never liked Hopkins much, so didn't really engage sympathetically with the father character in the way I feel I may have done more if it had been an actor I like. I see from reviews of the play there were parts that came across as funny onstage, but I didn't get that at all here: very downbeat. I also felt the setting was so luxuriously gorgeous and the characters' apparent lack of financial worries around care/help disconnected me somewhat too: with my own family and friends' illness, the deterioration of their physical surroundings was/is part and parcel of it and I didn't get that at all from this.
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