Having already played fantasy author CS Lewis in Shadowlands, legendary thespian Anthony Hopkins hands the role over to Matthew Goode, instead taking on the role of seminal head shrinker Sigmund Freud in this historical drama.
When is Freud’s Last Session being released in the UK?
Freud’s Last Session is screening exclusively in UK cinemas from June 14.
What is Freud’s Last Session about?
Two days after the outbreak of World War II, Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis get together for a wide-ranging chinwag that encompasses faith, war, trauma, and JRR Tolkien. Now, this meeting may not have taken place—we know Freud met with an Oxford don at the time, but history fails to record which one.
However, author and psychiatrist Armand Nicholi (who was the in-house shrink for the New England Patriots, weirdly enough) compared the contrasting philosophies of the devout Lewis and the atheist Freud in his acclaimed 2003 book The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, which in turn prompted playwright Mark St. Germain to pen the 2009 play Freud’s Last Session, which has now become, in the hands of director and co-writer Matthew Brown, the film at hand.
The cast of Freud’s Last Session
In addition to Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud and Matthew Goode as CS Lewis, we have Liv Lisa Fries (Babylon Berlin) as Anna Freud, the good doctor’s daughter; Jodi Balfour (Ted Lasso) as Dorothy Burlingham, her lover; and Jeremy Northam as Ernest Jones, Freud’s official biographer.
Freud’s Last Session trailer
Why we’re excited about Freud’s Last Session
Surely we’re at the stage where we’ll turn up just to see Anthony Hopkins do his thing, yeah? This kind of cerebral, dialogue heavy treatise-as-movie isn’t for everyone, sure, but if you’re in the mood to watch some great actors grapple with big questions re: life, the universe, and everything, you won’t want to miss this.
