My family realised my great-grandmother had dementia after she accused my mother of stealing her Christmas presents. Incandescent, Great Gra...
My family realised my great-grandmother had dementia after she accused my mother of stealing her Christmas presents. Incandescent, Great Grandma May called my grandma and claimed my mother – her granddaughter – had broken into her house and stolen several large bags full of gifts intended for the family. Needless to say, this wasn't true (not least because it was the height of summer), and my grandma became increasingly concerned about her mother's health. Although my Great Grandma May was famously belligerent, these accusations became more outlandish as her dementia developed. When she eventually went into a care home, two years before she died, she told all the residents her eldest daughter – my grandmother, who visited every few weeks – had stolen all her money and run away to Australia, which was why she had to live in the home.
Dementia is defined as a syndrome associated with the decline of brain function; Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia are the most common types, but there are others, including Lewy Body Dementia and Frontotemporal dementia. Despite statistics from the World Health Organisation stating that more than 5% of the global population over the age of 60 have some form of dementia, making it a fairly common disease, it is a condition that has a considerable stigma attached. And it often feels as though – perhaps out of our fear around the disease – we still don't quite know how to centre patients in the conversations around, and depictions of, dementia. Florian Zeller's The Father, a film about a father and daughter navigating their difficult relationship as he lives with dementia, aims to change this by giving us a real insight into what it's like to live with the illness, as well as how difficult it is to care for someone with it.
Adapted from Zeller's stage play of the same name, The Father focuses on Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), who is grappling with symptoms of dementia, and his contentious relationship with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman), who visits him at his west London flat, and is trying to arrange home help for him. Anthony, a spirited, retired engineer who loves listening to opera arias and dancing as he did in his glory days, thinks Anne is worrying unduly, and does his best to stop her "interfering". From the beginning it's clear Anthony is perhaps not the easiest man in the world to get along with, but over the course of the story, we come to understand his tumultuous worldview, and how irritated, disorientated and frightened he is as a result of becoming increasingly unable to differentiate reality from his memories. Watching The Father, I recognised so much of my family's personal experience in the film – particularly the way in which dementia patients can become increasingly fearful and combative as they struggle to make sense of their own thoughts. - from source bbc.com
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