崎路父子情英文影评 版本3

Writer Blake Morrison (Firth) never had the best of relationships with eccentric doctor father, Arthur (Broadbent). Blake remembers a childhood largely devoid of paternal love, and Arthur's affair with another woman put his relationships with both his wife Kim (Stevenson) and Blake under great strain. However, Arthur is now stricken with cancer, and Blake knows this is his last chance to find some sort of peace with his father.

There's a scene in And When Did You Last See Your Father? that perfectly demonstrates both the film's biggest strength and its most significant weakness. Shortly before Arthur dies, Blake and Kim, both exhausted, are having a conversation. Blake asks his mother, "How did you put up with him?" To which she replies, "I didn't - not always." Within this short interchange of dialogue the audience experiences the incredible depth of the acting on display, and can also see how well the film constructs its characters. And yet, this scene also makes us ask our own questions; mainly whether Arthur really comes across as all that bad.

There are very few actors who can play characters who continually bottle up their emotions as well as Colin Firth; he's been doing it for years. From The English Patient to Bridget Jones's Diary - he's an actor who always hints at something far deeper going on behind his characters' eyes. Blake is a man who harbours an enormous amount of feeling for his father - both good and bad - but who realises his time to express these emotions is running out. There's an intensity to be derived from the uncertainty as to whether or not they are all going to gush out of him.

Stevenson is also similarly impressive. Like Blake, Kim is a woman who has remained quietly faithful to her husband, while suppressing any negative feelings she may have towards him. Her devotion to Arthur is in many ways tragic because, while we understand that he reciprocates her love, we rather wish he'd show it a bit more. For his part, Broadbent actually has one of the simpler characters to portray, though that shouldn't take anything away from his nuanced performance. Arthur is really quite an annoying bastard, but one who is certainly difficult to hate for it. Elsewhere, debutante Matthew Beard makes a very strong impression as the teenage version of Blake.

So what the film really has going for it is some very strong acting, and characters who are given plenty of depth. However, while we might see them behaving and feeling in certain ways, the film never provides much justification for why they actually do. Arthur's biggest crime against Blake seems to have been that he was a bit embarrassing, particularly when the young man was trying to impress women. He and Kim also resent his affair with Aunt Beaty (Sarah Lancashire) but, perhaps because the characters all keep their emotions under wraps, the extent of the emotional damage caused is never clear. By the end of proceedings it's very easy to feel that we've been sufficiently engaged, but we remain unclear insofar as the characters' animosity is concerned. Their problems are too personal and specific, and lack that universal element that would allow an audience to relate to them.

For his part, Tucker gives the film a grandeur that distinguishes it from made-for-television stories of this nature. He's rather keen on using reflections of characters, which can seem a little forced at times - particularly in one scene where Blake is hiding under a bed. But in others it works well. Barrington Pheloung's musical score is moving, though a little too much on occasion. Howard Atherton's mannered but still very pretty photography is also admirable.

It comes as no surprise to me that And When Did You Last See Your Father? is based on a book of the same name by Blake Morrison himself. It feels like a book - like a very personal story with attention paid to all the main protagonists. But while the personal detail is meticulous, that doesn't necessarily mean we can properly get inside the characters' heads. The crucial effect of this is that the people in the film are hard to connect with, and ultimately, hard to feel true sympathy for.

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