Father

Joseph Meuller (Max von Sydow) seems the ideal grandfather, trading silly jokes with his two granddaughters on whom he dotes shamelessly. Meuller also advises his daughter Anne Winton (Carol Drinkwater) and son-in-law Bobby (Steven Jacobs) on how to manage the hotel he founded. As we watch him accompany his grandchildren to school, Meuller is being observed by a middle-aged woman and filmed by a clandestine camera crew. Later, that woman, Leah Zetnick (Julia Blake), calls Anne to advise her to watch a weekly news program. On that show, it is alleged that Joe Meuller is, in reality, Franz Kessler who commanded the murder squad that killed Leah Zetnick's parents during WWII. She has even unearthed a photograph of a man in SS uniform who resembles a young Meuller. While Anne and Bobby look on aghast, Mueller rushes to the bathroom to be sick.

Their dismay turns into real dread when they realise that they are now besieged by teams of cameramen, so they decide to leave for a vacation at the seashore. While there, they are visited by the TV producer who wants an exclusive interview and is willing to impart the news that the federal authorities are about to issue an indictment of Meuller. Anne takes her father to an isolated shack in the outback, while she prepares, with the family lawyer, George Coleman (Tim Robertson), to defend her father.

In the courtroom, Meuller argues that any proof of his identity was destroyed in the Dresden firestorm, while Anne goes to the TV producer to trade an exclusive interview for his help. Apparently, he supplies information about Leah Zetnick's past, including a ruined engagement in England, her false charges against another German emigre and her own brief spell of hospitalization. George reduces her to tears on the witness stand, and Meuller is exonerated. Despite the celebration of his victory at the hotel, Bobby warns Anne that there may have been something to the charges, reminding her of his own Vietnam War experiences.

Meanwhile, Leah Zetnick has decided to take matters into her own hands and goes to the hotel packing an automatic pistol. By hiding in the bathroom, she manages to sneak into the Wintons' apartment and, drawing a bead on Meuller, forces the adults into the bedroom, making a point of sparing the children any unrest. Talking to Anne, Leah tells her how she is going to trust her with the burden she has borne since the war and then proceeds to blow her own brains out.

To Anne's shock, her father seems unconcerned with the woman's suicide, and she starts to question him severely about his past. Was he just a simple Afrika Korps veteran, as he has long claimed? She demands to know what happened to the real Joseph Meuller and her father admits that he had assumed this identity in the POW camp after the real Meuller had killed himself. With a cold fury, Anne demands her father leave the house and have nothing more to do with her children. In the closing scenes we see the emotional toll Anne's decision takes on her, and the genuine pain it causes the real Franz Kessler.

Directed by John Power from a screenplay by Tony Cavanaugh and Grahame Hartley, FATHER's account of a highly dramatic, if unusual, domestic situation is seen from a nearly feminist viewpoint, since the principal movers are both women, Anne and Leah, while Meuller, at one point, contemplates running away to the northern coastal town of Darwin. Leah is also characterized as a devout daughter, intent on avenging her parents' murder, and her apartment is full of books, documents and wartime photographs. A minor, but haunting element in the film, is Leah's signature tune, a childish voice singing an odd march, "Ilya's Song" at key moments in the narrative. (Adult situations.) leave a comment