Understanding Dementia

• The film ‘The Father’ starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman,  is a 2020 psychological Drama. In the leading role is an illness, Dementia Alzheimer Type (DAT)── .✦

The movie walks us very sensitively through the brain and behaviour of old man with Alzheimer. It tracks realistically the main subject i.e. the course of illness and how it impacts the life and emotions of those who love and care for the patient── .✦

⚡︎ Dementia shows up with its early signs (misplacing things) when Anthony starts forgetting where he kept his watch. He hides things and suspects people of stealing and blames his daughter and son-in-law of conspiring to send him away so they can own his house. The old man forgets names (aphasia), lapses into the world created with his own thoughts and visions and mixing it up with real world (retreating into inner reality based on feelings rather than intellect). Anthony berates his caring daughter often ‘My daughter has the habit of repeating things’ ‘She is not intelligent’. We notice frequent changes in his moods. He doesn’t get along with his caretaker, Angela. He appears particularly warm to another initially, offers her a drink and even dances for her. Then suddenly rebukes her sternly for laughing inanely. He forgets what his profession has been. He has his ways. At one point he says he was a tap dancer a painter. While we are informed by the daughter Ann that he was an engineer. All this while he keeps insisting ‘I can manage myself. I don’t need any help’── .✦

⚡︎ The illness progresses. Not recognising people close to him (agnosia). Not able to care for self. In one of the scenes he is not able to wear his clothes and holds his pullover at a loss how he was going to put it on when daughter helps him (apraxia). Attributing people with designs and breaking their hearts. His mind perceives someone having a different appearance. Then he loses the sense of time and place (disorientation). He confuses hospice for his old home or his daughter’s flat. Remembers his deceased daughter regrets she doesn’t come to see him. And dementia advances into ‘Who am I exactly? where am I? do I? Who are you exactly? How shall I put it…? I can see her face. I want to get out of here’. This is the climax── .✦

⚡︎ When Anthony’s daughter comes to settle him down in the institution, he sounds so vulnerable. ‘What about me?‘ She tells him she has to go, it’s important ‘you’ll manage.’ His words ‘On my own?’ make the heart ache.  He realizes he is losing himself, his identity. ‘I’m losing All my leaves, branches, the wind and the rain don’t know what’s happening…all my leaves’. This is utterly pathetic. The advanced stage of illness── .✦

 ⚡︎ If we see from therapy point of view, what does the nurse do besides medication? First she tries reality orientation when she shows his daughters card and tells she sometimes comes on weekends. When the patient laments he has ‘nowhere to put my head anymore’. I have a watch on my hand.. She extends her hand, supports him, validates his feelings and meanings hidden behind his confused speech and behaviour. It is emotional content of what is being said that is more important than the person’s orientation to the present. by empathizing with feelings and m she brings him back to present from the past.  He misses his mother who gave him the identity his name and he yearns for rest and peace cries like a baby ‘I want to go home. I want my mommy, I want my mommy’── .✦

⚡︎ If one has actually known someone with dementia, all this is so relatable. More so because of Anthony Hopkins’ powerful performance── .✦

⚡︎ If someone wants to gain an insight into dementia, what it looks like and feels, how difficult it is for the person suffering from it and how difficult and painful it is for the family, ‘The Father’ offers it. ⋆.˚

🎤Over to you. Drop a comment below! 

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