Review: When Did You Last See Your Father?

When Did You Last See Your Father?

Opening Date: 06/06/2008 (NY/LA)

STUDIO: Sony Pictures Classics

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge

Between every father and his son there is a story to be told.

Opening Statement

Based on the autobiography of Blake Morrison under the same name, When Did You Last See Your Father? is a film that reflects upon the parental figure. The plot touches upon themes of respect, contempt, and understanding concerning one’s parents and the indisputable truth that as children we are doomed to become them in one facet or another.

Facts of the Case

Blake Morrison (Colin Firth) deals with his father Arthur’s (Jim Broadbent) terminal illness and imminent death, exploring the dynamic of the father/son relationship. As Blake comes to terms with his relationship with his father, he retreads back into his memories as a child and adolescent revealing the humorous, embarrassing, and distasteful aspects of his father. All of this is interspersed with his present situation as he struggles with accepting his father and himself.

The Evidence

Generational films can act as allegories about family structure, cultural evolution, or simply personal stories. They often are reflections upon generational divisions and past regrets. Or, they can merely be interesting family stories that need to be heard. When Did You Last See Your Father? fails to accomplish any of these attributes, which is a shame because Morrison’s story has the potential to rise to the occasion with an a dynamic cast of family characters and actors. What the film delivers to the audience is mediocrity, blandness, and a plot structure that leaves the audience cold with a payoff that barely had sufficient prior setup.

Here is a film with a very respectable cast of headliners in Colin Firth (Pride & Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary) and Jim Broadbent (Iris, Hot Fuzz) who have the performance range to bring the class and humor required in these two characters, Blake and Arthur. While Blake is emotionally distant as an adolescent and adult, his father Arthur is an eccentric womanizer. The two are reunited when Arthur contracts terminal cancer and Blake must come home to care for his father during his last days. At a brisk 92 minutes, When Did You Last See Your Father? hastily sets up the players and the predicament. There is not enough time or steady pacing to feel any empathy towards these characters. Instead, the film provides a collage of moments as substitute for story structure, hoping that merely presenting interspersing memories with the present will create some sort of linearity within the story. What arrives is an almost stream of conscious narrative that offers a convoluted mess of a memoir.

There is a moment where Blake looks back at a camping trip with his father during his teen years. Eventually, teen Blake suspects that his father Arthur may not be entirely faithful to his mother Kim. The scene subsequently enters a flashback within a flashback where teen Blake remembers a moment in his boyhood catching his father unfaithfully cavorting with his Aunt Beaty in the privacy of the family car. After this incident, Blake has the repeated suspicion that his cousin maybe be his half-sister. When Did You Last See Your Father? continues these vexing jumps from the ’50s, ’60s, and present day. The film introduces the Scottish maid Sandra, who maintains a flirtatious relationship with a young Blake. As quickly as she arrives, the character disappears only to come back as a device for Blake to defy his father and reach manhood. An adult Blake purposefully visits Sandra to announce that she was his first love, only to uncharacteristically attempt to revive the romance. Prior to this event there is no indication that Blake’s current marriage is suffering from any emotional hardships whatsoever.

This sort of thematic identity crisis plagues When Did You Last See Your Father? Instead of intertwining the similar dilemmas of Blake and Arthur, as well as teen Blake and adult Blake, the film divorces these characters’ storylines not allowing any connection of recognition to relate them. At times, these plotlines of family, loyalty, and respect seem forced and distant, despite their similarities. This is a shame, because there is an extremely effective tearjerker somewhere in the film. All of the elements are present: a deathbed-ridden father, a reunited son, a long lost love, a family tragedy, but because of its presentation, much of the emotional weight is lost in the transition between the time jumps.

It is no help that Blake is an extremely unlikable character compared to his father, Arthur. It is hard to relate to the feelings of Firth’s emotionally distant, narcissistic Blake, while Broadbent plays Arthur with joyful energy and approachability, despite his faults. Many of the problems Blake finds in his father are unfounded or misguided, such as believing that he is in competition for the affections of a young female companion on holiday. In fact, the most interesting drama in the film is disrespectfully ignored, that being Blake’s mother Kim’s (Juliet Stevenson) tolerance of Arthur’s fraternization with Aunt Beaty. There is mention that Kim conveniently gets “migraines” when Arthur visits Aunt Beaty for extended periods of time and the two parents do get into a heated argument off screen, but this plot thread is subdued for Blake’s recollection of events.

However, When Did You Last See Your Father? ends on a high note. Only after Arthur passes away does the film touch upon its potential. Blake recalls the final moments with his father before he leaves for university and embraces him. An adult Blake finally realizes that, despite what seems to be disdain for his father, he cannot deny who he is and the effect he has had on his life. The film reflects on the last time Blake saw his father before he contracted cancer. It is a poetic line of rhetorical questioning that sums up the film’s title. Too bad it arrives too little too late.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

When Did You Last See Your Father? is a film about dysfunctional father/son dynamic, and Blake’s austere demeanor is a result. The film’s structure is not meant to compose linearity but merely provide brief a window in Blake’s impression of his father as a man, both the good and bad. Despite all of Arthur’s deplorable personal attributes, he is Blake’s father and coming to terms with a parent as a person instead of an idol is the thematic umbrella that oversees all the events in the film. Ultimately, it’s a story about a son’s acceptance of his father, not a journey through self-realization or character growth.

Closing Statement

When Did You Last See Your Father? has the talent but not the skill to deliver on the promise of its premise.

The Verdict
Guilty of missing the mark on the potential of its material, its actors, and the affections of its audience.

Score: 6.5/10

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