“Freud’s Lassion Session,” releasing Friday from Sony Pictures Classics, imagines a meeting between Christian apologist C.S. Lewis and renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud. The film, directed by Matthew Brown and starring Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, and Jodi Balfour, is based on the stage play of the same name, which is also based on “The Question of God” by Armond Nicholi.
Through discussions about the existence of God, morality, and mortality, the two iconic figures give voice to arguments that have rang through halls of academia throughout history. Brown, who previously released “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” spoke to Reel Faith’s DeWayne Hamby about the themes presented in the film as well as directing the Academy Award-winning actor Hopkins.
Tell me about your journey in making “Freud’s Last Session.”
I came off this other film, “The Man Who Knew infinity.” And this was in the very early stage of a first draft of the script by the playwright. When I when I first saw it, and I was kind of inclined to run away from it, to be honest with you. It felt like a similar territory to where I had just come out of, to a degree, and my father is a psychiatrist. So, I just thought I don’t want anything to do with this. But those themes, it got under my skin. This was six years ago, seven years ago, when I saw so many parallels that I was like “This is timely, this is something that should be made into a film.” So, it got its hooks into me. And I developed it for a number of years with the playwright, screenwriter, co-screenwriter, and started to try to get it out of the room with the two men and find its own way as a screenplay. And that that took a long while. That sort of began my journey with it. And it’s today now six, seven years later. Things are even more prolific than they were six years ago. So, I feel like it’s even more timely. I’m glad that I stuck with it, because I’m hoping out of it may come some conversations and something good hopefully.
What I think is timely and fascinating is the conversations. I was a devout Christian in public school and I welcomed those discussion. I felt like I had enough confidence in my faith that we could have an intelligent conversation. That’s what I appreciate about this film. Even if we disagree, there’s still a connection, a relationship.
That’s the beauty of the film, but for me it’s that at the end of the film, they still completely disagree with one another. But they maybe come away from it learning something about themselves or about the other person that they can respect. But I get the sense at the end of the film, that they don’t want to leave each other, that they’ve actually grown to like one another and care about one another. And yet, they don’t agree. And I just feel like, we’re all humans. We’re all going through this human experience. And there’s this sad, sad state these days where everyone thinks, unless you believe exactly how I believe that I must hate you. It’s just it’s tragic. Because, you know, none of us know. I mean, Hopkins even said that at one point to me that “None of us know. We haven’t died and come back from death yet. And if there’s somebody out there that I’d love to meet them, but I, you know, I haven’t been able to find one yet.” So, since we all don’t know, whether we have faith, or we don’t have faith, or whatever we have, we’re just humans on this journey. And we’re all going to find out. I think in the meanwhile, we can have respect for one another. I guess I didn’t want to have an agenda with the film. I wanted people to make up their own minds, I felt it was very important not to have an agenda. I feel like we succeeded in that. But if I do have an agenda, there’s one thing I had, which is that let people talk and do it with respect. That’s what my hope was.
My brother, Bobby Harrington, is a pastor. And I showed the film to him early on, and he’s a devout Christian. And I was very nervous, because he knew a lot about CS Lewis. And it was important to him, and he loved it. But he said, “What’s so great about this is it challenges your faith. And it makes you think, and that’s important for us as Christians” is what he was saying. And I thought, that’s kind of beautiful.
Director Matthew Brown
Speaking of Hopkins, I thought was very interesting that now he’s played CS Lewis, and he’s played Freud, so he’s been on both sides of the coin. How did it feel to have him among the cast?
Well, I mean, it was about as scary as it can get in the beginning, like the first day or two, but, and I’m not just saying this, the idea of meeting your hero, this is one of the ones you want to meet. He’s just a good person, on top of being insanely talented, and a man of many different talents, honestly, like, including some of the music in this film. But what he did was he engaged with me in such a positive way, from the very, very beginning, that it didn’t even give me a chance to like, get stuck in the fear all about the work immediately. And he does it in such a massive way. And that’s probably what makes him so great. And on some level, his commitment, his work ethic, there’s so much preparation that he puts into this and so much thought and care that as a director, it’s like people said, “What’s it like to direct Tony Hopkins?” Well, you just do it, because he doesn’t give you a choice. You don’t think about it, you’re just in the moment so much. I mean, I’m sure there’ll come a point when this is all done. And I’ll sit back and I’ll think about it. And I’ll say, now that that actually happened, it’s a dream and it’s something I’ll never forget. He taught me a lot. What I what I learned most from this film was when you have Anthony Hopkins on your film, it starts with him. He sets the tone the tenor for the whole thing, and it means everybody brings their A game. So, for what it’s worth, I mean, whether or not the film works or this or that or box office and all the other things are out of your control. The actual craft of making the film, everybody brought their A game and I now know what that looks like, which is a scary thing because going forward. I’m not going to want anything else.
“Freud’s Last Session,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, and directed by Matthew Brown, will release in theaters from Sony Pictures Classics on Dec. 22.
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