Freud’s Last Session (2023): Freud vs C.S. Lewis

Freud’s Last Session, a new film from director Matt Brown – best known for The Man Who Knew infinity (2015) – imagines a meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis on September 3, 1939 – the day Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland, and The Second World War officially began.  So, a very auspicious day. This was just over a year after Freud relocated to London from his long-time home in Vienna, along with his psychotherapist daughter Anna to avoid the very real threat of incarceration and death at the hands of the ruthlessly antisemitic Nazis. The fictional meeting was just three weeks before the ailing Freud, age 83 and in the final stages of a painful, inoperable mouth cancer, committed physician assisted suicide. 

Between the war, the holocaust, and his own impending demise, fundamental questions about life, faith and meaning were evidently on the mind of lifelong atheist Freud. Which is why he invited the increasingly prominent theologian and Oxford scholar Lewis, 42, to come by for a chat. He was curious, he said, how someone as intelligent as Lewis, who had rejected religion early in life, could fervently take up any kind of religious faith (and particularly Christianity) in mid-life, as Lewis famously did at age 32. Superficially, at least, Freud was itching for an intellectual jousting, but perhaps he was hoping to be convinced a little by Lewis. 

What we get in Freud’s Last Session is quite a verbal joust for sure. Whether it amounts to much, when all is said and done, is another matter. No one “wins” the discussion. So, you might ask, why should I watch this?

What makes it worthwhile are the actors playing Freud and Lewis. That would be Anthony Hopkins [The Father (2020), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), etc.] and Matthew Goode [Downton Abbey (2014 – 2017), The Imitation Game (2014)]. Both give it their all, with Hopkins playing offense like the proud, imperious intellectual legend Freud had become late in life, while Goode, as Lewis, takes a less strident, more “reasonable” tone in response. If anything, I’d argue that Hopkins rather overdoes his Freud, playing him with a level of vigorous eccentricity that feels incompatible with the man’s rapidly deteriorating health at the time. But he certainly enlivens the proceedings. It also must be said that it is interesting in its own right to follow the point–counterpoint dialogue. As a bonus, the verbal thrusts and parries of the two learned protagonists - often illustrated with brief, related memory flashbacks - provide informed insight into their respective psyches - particularly with respect to Lewis. 

Freud’s Last Session also touches on a few aspects of Freud’s and Lewis’s stories that raise tantalizing questions, although the movie makes no attempt to resolve them. One of these concerns Freud’s relationship with his beloved daughter Anna, herself an important figure in the Freudian movement and a key founder of psychoanalytic child psychology. At the time of this story, 43-year-old Anna – in a nice performance by Liv Lisa Fries [Babylon Berlin (2017-2022) - is still living with her father, and in addition to her own work, is his caregiver, secretary and gatekeeper. His control over her (or perhaps it’s her devotion to her father) is near absolute. He required of her and received near total paternal obeisance.  Contrary to his established principles, Freud served as her analyst. Anna was  gay and in a serious relationship with Dorothy Burlingham, but she could neither admit her sexuality to her father, nor otherwise openly bring this ‘friendship’ into her life. (After Freud’s death, Anna brought Dorothy to the Freud home in London, where they lived and worked together for the next 40 years.)

Lewis, has flashbacks to the horrors of his wartime experiences in the trenches of the Somme valley. With death all around them, he and a buddy, Paddy Moore, pledge that if one doesn’t make it, the other will take care his family. After Paddy dies, Lewis connects with Paddy’s ‘Mum’, Janey Moore (Jodi Balfour), who tells him she does not need to be cared for. Nevertheless, despite a 27 year age difference, Lewis and Mrs. Moore struck up a strong friendship and lived together (at times along with Lewis’ brother and Janey’s daughter) for over twenty years. Some have suggested that the relationship was more than just friends, but while the question is briefly suggested in Freud’s Last Session, it too is never answered.

The way the film sets up the situation in which the dialogue is set, with the emphasis on the terrors of fascism, antisemitism, displacement and existential doubt, prompts the question: why make this movie now?  In director Matt Brown’s view, it’s because the story speaks to our own troubled time. “We live in a strange, surreal age that is ideologically polarized, with everyone stuck in their own tribes. There is no respect for others’ points of view and yet a real dialogue with others is exactly what people seem to be thirsting for. In the film we have these two titans with diametrically opposed points of view who choose to respectfully battle out their differences over God. ... While there are no answers, it's only through conversation that personal growth becomes possible for each of them. I wanted to make a film that was emotional, thought provoking, and creative, that asked big questions, and looked deeply at the heart of all human condition: love, faith, and mortality.”

It is admirable for a filmmaker to aim big, but I’m sorry, Matt: looking at your goals, I’d have to say that Freud’s Last Session falls far short. The tension between ideologies of fact-based scientific rationalism and faith-based deism has existed for centuries. The imagined debate in Freud’s Last Session adds little of substance to the discussion.  The Freud – Lewis debate is certainly interesting, but it’s not world changing. Modeling a relatively civil discussion between two intellectuals who wind up respectfully agreeing to disagree is a lovely gesture, but not much more than that.   

I’m reminded of the much stronger message delivered by the wonderful recent novel Apeirogon, that encapsulates and personalizes the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the experiences of two men, one a Palestinian Arab, the other an Israeli Jew, each of whom has lost a young daughter to the insanities of war. The Israeli has a sticker on the front of his motorbike, which sums it up succinctly with the statement “It Will Not Be Over Until We Talk.”  

1 hour 48 minutes

Grade: B

Now playing in a few select theaters nationwide, including the AMC Metreon in San francisco, expanding to more venues on January 16, 2024.  For a theater location near you click HERE.