When Did You Last See Your Father?	by George Sax

Daddy was a firecracker

You spend your life not talking to someone, and then it’s too late,” Blake Morrison ruefully observes at one point in When Did You Last See Your Father? Blake (Colin Firth) is lamenting the mostly superficial communication and the unsettled grievances that have marked his 30-odd year relationship with his physician-father Arthur (Jim Broadbent). Now, in the days before his father’s impending death, Blake hovers at Arthur’s bedside and wanders under a cloud of morose, perplexed resentment through his parents’ large house in the English countryside.

Jim Broadbent in When Did You Last See Your Father?

Of course, as the film reveals in many interwoven scenes from their joint past, Arthur and Blake have been bound together in a meaningful relationship for most of the son’s life. It’s the nature of that meaning that Blake is contemplating in trying circumstances.

Arthur, it very soon becomes apparent, has been something of a lad, a confidently expansive bloke whose family has often moved in the wake of his genially self-aggrandizing, occasional dishonest conduct. “Noise, bluster, scams…” is how his son refers to his old man’s behavior and character. His unhappy reverie takes us back to an awards ceremony where Blake, a poet and literary critic, is receiving a coveted honor, and where the happily vulgarian Arthur schmoozes with Salman Rushdie and jokes to his son that the literary trophy is only made of plastic. Later, in another of the film’s many disynchronous flashbacks, Blake fixes on a more serious breach, one that may involve a betrayal of his dutiful, intelligent mother (Juliet Stevenson), a crime of the heart that burns in Blake’s memory.

As directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl), When Did You Last See Your Father? is carefully assembled and introspective; it only infrequently intensifies the obvious but reserved emotional content of the material as Blake explores his feelings about Arthur. The interwoven flashbacks are softly but radiantly lit and photographed (by Howard Atherton), and Tucker has framed many of his shots expressively. The director doesn’t avoid the humor in this interrupted narrative. Arthur has a crude, merry neo-Falstaffian vitality.

Part of the problem with the film is that Arthur’s bumbling, outgoing insensitivity doesn’t seem as distressing to us as it does to his boy. Blake can resemble a resentment-stiffened prig. Near the film’s end, his sister asks him impatiently, “Why can’t you just let it go? It’s history.” You may find yourself asking a similar question. Arthur may sometimes come off as a vulgar, self-indulgent fraud, but as becomes clear, and even Blake must eventually realize, he has cared for his family and tried to do right by them.

The inconsistency of viewpoint may derive in part from the difficulties entailed in adapting Morrison’s 1993 memoir of the same title. The author’s voice and sensibility may have defined the characters better than the film does. Film usually must stress ambiance and performance, and in Broadbent, it has an invaluable asset. His Arthur has a hearty, rough-hewn, slightly juvenile charm, and when he allows us to see the man’s deeper sympathies, it seems real enough. Broadbent provides both energy and little epiphanies that enrich the film. Newcomer Mathew Beard, as the increasingly dissatisfied adolescent Blake, turns in an unexpectedly controlled but keenly felt performance.

Some of the film’s unevenness probably reflects the subject: The conflicted, inchoate feelings children often have for parents, the anxious concern that love may not be enough. When Did You Last See Your Father? is an honest, ultimately affecting meditation on these emotions and responses.