There were no car chases or bloody shootouts. And some of the most suspenseful scenes had to do with the lead character forgetting things.
But it was as intense and suspenseful as any movie I’ve seen in a long time.
Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of a man with dementia was a wonderful bit of acting,. The technique of seeing the confounding events through the eyes of Hopkins was an excellent way to make the audience glimpse what dementia is like.
As a writer with Lewy body dementia, I have been through most of the symptomatic presentations the film tries to portray.: Forgetting faces, time, and locations. Seeing and interacting with people who are not there.
I wish the film had a scene in it that would have given viewers more context.. I think it could have done easily with a scene at the doctor’s office, with medical staff explaining to Hopkins’ character the type of dementia it was, life expectancy and medications, etc. By leaving those and other elements out, the movie left the audience to figure out the sometimes impressionistic sequences of Hopkins view. of his world. But maybe that was the point.
Did anyone ever use the word Alzheimer’s in the movie? They must have but I didn’t catch it. I’m absolutely certain they didn’t mention Lewy body dementia, the second leading type of degenerative brain disease behind Alzheimer’s.. Frontotemporal, vascular, and Parkinson’s disease with dementia are other forms of dementia. Lewy body patients usually have the most hallucinations.
These are quibbles at most. The movie was excellent and will raise empathetic awareness to an increasing and scary bevy of dementias. We need early, correct diagnosis and more research into the types to improve treatments and increase lifespans.
Read Lewy body patient Mike Oliver’s experience with ‘horrific’ hallucinations here:
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