Review of Father

Father (1990)
8/10
Highly recommended.
3 December 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This is an excellent film which should not be overlooked. Two of my favorite actors, Max von Sydow and Carol Drinkwater, give superb performances. I have admired Sydow since I saw my first foreign film many years ago and I'm sure I am only one of thousands of American men who fell for Carol Drinkwater when she portrayed Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small. (By now she is probably sick and tired of that association.) Perhaps the standout, however, is Julia Blake as the troubled Holocaust survivor. This film deals with an aspect of Nazism not commonly treated in American films, namely that it is possible, perhaps even common, for people who are evil in most important respects, to be absolutely charming in more superficial ones. What moral stance must one assume when faced with the real possibility that a loved one has done unspeakable things? Shakepeare wrote that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds," but is this really so? Can someone truly love one person, any person, in any meaningful sense of the word and not love humanity as well? The previous commentator is mistaken; Carol Drinkwater plays the daughter, not Julia Blake.
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