Fathers and Daughters (Gabriele Muccino, 2015)
Imdb
Date Watched:10/12/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: Russell Crowe
Rewatch: No
Possible Spoilers Ahead
I went into this film knowing next to nothing about it because - except for a few PMs from JayDee who alerted me to it - I never heard anything about it. No ads on television. No reviews, either from critics or movie fans. Nothing.
What I did know was that it starred Russell Crowe, who despite some recent missteps (
Man of Steel, Noah, The Man With the Iron Fists, and the truly awful
Winter's Tale), has been one of my favorite actors for the past sixteen years. He is second only to Joaquin Phoenix in his ability to make me feel for his characters (except for
Winter's Tale, there's just nothing redeeming about that movie) and with this performance he did not let me down.
Russell Crowe plays Jake Davis, a Pulitzer Prize winning author struggling to cope with the physical and psychological trauma that he suffered following a horrific car accident that killed his wife and left him a single father. But his troubles don't end there. A stay in a mental hospital strains his finances. His new book is a critical and commercial bomb. His sister-in-law and her lawyer husband have filed a custody suit for his daughter. And the neurological damage from the accident has left him with increasingly severe seizures.
Davis is a loving, dedicated father willing to sacrifice anything for his child and Crowe does well to give this character an emotional authenticity. The scenes between him and Kylie Rogers, who plays his daughter Katie, are touching and effective.
But his is not the only story being told here. We also fast forward many years to follow an older Katie (played by Amanda Seyfried) - a young woman who doesn't know how to love or be loved and who self-destructs in a haze of alcohol and a stream of one night stands. But her life isn't total chaos. She finds purpose in her career as a social worker, where she develops a strong bond with a troubled, orphaned child.
Both stories are engaging, both lead performances are solid, and the supporting cast - including Aaron Paul, Octavia Spencer, Diane Kruger, and Jane Fonda - are all good as well, but there's something lacking here. And that something is a true connection between the stories. The film never really tells us
why. We flash back and forth from a child who knows love very well to a woman who is a near stranger to it, but we are deprived of the journey from one point to the other. From the quick bit of research I've done, it seems the final film is significantly different from the original script in this regard - which is a shame, because what we're left with just feels incomplete.