Freud’s Last Session [7/10]

The premise of Freud’s Last Session, directed and co-written by Matt Brown (who doesn’t shy from conceptually challenging ideas, as shown by his movie about a famous Indian mathematician, The Man Who Knew Infinity), might largely predetermine if this should occupy your time. What if Sigmund Freud, just before his London death in September 1939 (with evil occurring real time as Hitler invaded Poland), entertained a visit from C. S. Lewis, then a young academic who had renounced atheism for Christianity? What if the sex-focused atheist debated God with the god-botherer? If you abhor religion but equally decry Freudianism, Freud’s Last Session will annoy rather than entertain, and I had thought, as I entered the cinema, that I would fall into this category, only to find myself rather engrossed in the scorching debate. One reason of course is the acting, Anthony Hopkins in crackling form as the founder of psychoanalysis and Matthew Goode equally fine as the author of the Narnia books, but the script also engages, cleverly building up tension from not much more than two men walking from room to room. The overall impact is blunted by the disjunctive subplots of Anna Freud and Lewis’s war flashbacks, but if movies exploring intellectual matters is your preference, I can commend Freud’s Last Session.