Limp and lifeless: Freud’s Last Session reviewed

Freud’s Last Session stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is a work of speculative fiction asking what would have happened if Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis had met to debate the existence of God. What if two of the greatest minds of the 20th century had the chance to thrash it out? Thrash it out they do but, alas, they cannot thrash any life into this film. If you are planning to see it at the cinema, a few espressos beforehand may not go amiss.

It is directed by Matthew Brown, who co-wrote the script with Mark St Germain, on whose play it is based. It takes place on 3 September 1939, the day Chamberlain declared war after Hitler invaded Poland. Freud, an atheist, has invited Lewis, a man of deep Christian faith, to his Hampstead home. He has issued this invitation, he says, ‘because I want to know why a man of your supreme intellect could abandon truth and embrace an insidious lie’.