Review: Freud's Last Session

Freud's Last Session is a play about a fictitious meeting between the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the Christian writer, and later creator of the Narnia books, C S Lewis. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey) and Liv Lisa Fies (Berlin Babylon).A film and a play may seem similar, but they're not really. A film is all closeups and different locations, a play is entirely a wide-shot of often just one room. A film is about action, a play is reaction, as characters' ideas and points of view collide. Like a former off-Broadway hit drama called Freud's Last Session.Watch the movie trailer here.Freud's Last Session is essentially a two-hander between two great minds - the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and academic and author C S Lewis. At stake, a debate to the finish over the existence of God. And despite the passion with which both Freud and Lewis hold to their positions, there's also a glee at debate that's very Oxford and Cambridge, and I'm sure, Vienna too. Freud is played - brilliantly, I might add - by Sir Anthony Hopkins, all brash certainty disguising unexpressed doubts.C S Lewis is played by one of my favourite not-quite stars, Matthew Goode. This is another terrific performance - polite deference to an ailing, elderly man, stubborn refusal to back down in the face of expert bullying by Freud, and underneath, the ever-present memory of the First World War.Freud's Last Session takes place in the hours before declaration of World War II, a mere 20 years after the nightmare of the first. Lewis had been in the trenches back then and suffered a breakdown.Freud and his daughter Anna had recently escaped from Vienna, and he and Lewis are united in their disgust at the Nazis.But does the existence of Hitler disprove the presence of God, or is he simply proof of the perils of freedom of choice?These are debates that have been going on for centuries, of course, but what lifts Freud's Last Session is that it's very much about these specific characters, not their well-trodden arguments.And behind the scenes - occasionally revealed in. slightly stagey flashbacks and asides - are the two important women in the men's lives. C S Lewis is in a relationship - in all but name - with the mother of a soldier he served with in the trenches. And Freud sometimes treats Anna like a child, demanding she put him before any outside relationship.This despite the fact that Anna is a respected lecturer in child psychology in her own right, and has been in a relationship with her friend Dorothy for years. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details