After Anthony Hopkins recently won the Oscar for best actor in THE FATHER, our Dementia Together team figured we’d better view the film. It was as promised: Creatively compelling and hopelessly heart-breaking–everything the cultural tragedy narrative around dementia would have us believe is inevitable and true.
THE FATHER shows Anthony developing signs of dementia and his daughter worrying about how she will care for him. Sometimes Anthony felt that “this nonsense is driving me crazy.” Starting with the assumption that Anthony, his daughter, Anne, and others in the story were doing the best they could, the saddest part of the film for me was that no one even knew that the hopelessness they felt was unnecessary.
Actor Anthony Hopkins
As we watched THE FATHER and wondered, “wait, what? did we miss something?” we experienced the greatest brilliance of the film in showing us as viewers what it might feel like to be con-fused because recent facts were not storing—facts like those we would normally be able to reference in or-der to manage without anxiety throughout the day. We witnessed how Anthony didn’t lose his reasoning capabilities or his desire to reason. He’s simply lost recent facts with which to reason.
Cyndy Luzinski,
MS, RN, Executive
Director, Dementia
Together
In our support groups, care partner classes, and ongoing family consultations, we share the simple understanding of the UK-originated SPECAL® Method to enable anyone to grasp why, what, and how to create sustainable well-being for people living with dementia. The expert living with dementia leads the way and the companion holds the key. For our loved persons living with dementia right now, their hope may not be in a future cure. It is in the current care.
Dementia Together is all about helping people care well so they and their loved persons can live well. To find out more, go to dementiatogether.org/. Article courtesy of by Cyndy Luzinski, MS, RN.