FREUD’S LAST SESSION movie poster | ©2023 Sony Pictures Classics

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Liv Lisa Fries, Jodi Balfour, Orla Brady
Writers: Mark St. Germain and Matthew Brown, based on the play by Mark St. Germain and suggested by THE QUESTION OF GOD by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.
Director: Matthew Brown
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: December 22, 2023

It is reported that, a few weeks before his death, the renowned psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud met with an unnamed professor from Oxford University. FREUD’S LAST SESSION, based on the play by Mark St. Germain, with a screenplay by St. Germain and the film’s director Matthew Brown, posits that this professor was C.S. Lewis. Lewis, already a published author, would go on to create the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA books.

In FREUD’S LAST SESSION, we’re in London, September 3, 1939, two days after Hitler has invaded Poland. Freud (played here by Anthony Hopkins) has moved with his family to England over a year ago, though he still misses his beloved Vienna.

Freud has summoned Lewis (Matthew Goode) for what turns out to be a meeting to converse about theology. Freud is Jewish and a firm atheist (he doesn’t see the two as contradictory), while Lewis, once a doubter, has zealously re-embraced Christianity.

Their discussion is punctuated with flashbacks for both men. We see Lewis fighting in the trenches of World War I, and bits of Freud’s professional and familial life.

This is all interspersed with the day of Freud’s daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries). Anna has become a respected child psychologist in her own right, but she is a virtual slave to her father’s demands, to the point where it’s affecting both her career and her relationship with patient-to-a-point lover Dorothy (Jodi Balfour).

Fear is in the air. Children are already being evacuated by train out of London to the country, where they’ll be safer from German bombers than they will in a big city. Both Freud and Lewis are alert to radio reports of the increasingly grim world situation. Freud has additional reasons for fear.

Brown certainly sets a tone of time and place, and (need it be said?) he’s got two extremely fine actors in Hopkins and Goode.

The arguments between Freud and Lewis are lively, impassioned, sometimes funny, and usually thoughtful. But both sides will likely be familiar to anybody who has read/watched such debates before.

More, neither Freud nor Lewis seems greatly affected by their talk. There’s an easy interpretation of why Freud wants this now, and the men gain appreciation for each other as human beings, which is agreeable, but there isn’t a sense of dramatic impact.

This is not to say that we don’t learn anything. We get some specifics on both Freud and Lewis’s lives, and some bonus information on Catholic saints and Greek mythology.

FREUD’S LAST SESSION does try to tangentially connect the visit with Lewis to Freud and Anna’s father/daughter situation, but this feels like a stretch. Indeed, it seems like we ought to get a bit more time with Anna, since she’s presented as the person who is touched by the day’s events.

Those interested in Hopkins’s pursuits other than acting should know that he composed some music for the soundtrack. The primary score, which is handsome, unobtrusive, and period-appropriate, is by Coby Brown.

FREUD’S LAST SESSION is well-acted by the entire cast, who have the benefit of articulate writing. It has intriguing moments, but they don’t flow together easily. Because the film keeps returning to “is there a God and what would proof/disprove this,” it somewhat resembles a news special. We don’t expect anybody’s mind to be changed, including our own, and we’re right.

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