Freud’s Last Session

➤Rated PG-13
➤Theaters

It’s the autumn of 1939. War between England and Germany has just broken out, but another sort of battle is about to begin. In his last days, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, sends for C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don and apologist, so the two can debate the existence of God.

This fictitious setup is the premise for Freud’s Last Session, a new movie that adapts the play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the book The Question of God by Armand Nicholi.

Anthony Hopkins plays Freud as a crotchety atheist with a bit of a vicious streak. He feels his own death looming, but he nevertheless longs for intellectual stimulation. The younger Lewis, played with earnestness by Matthew Goode, makes for an ideal sparring partner. Both actors give strong performances, though quite frankly Goode is too good-looking with his full head of hair to make a convincing Lewis.

Despite Hopkins’ and Goode’s achievements, the script doesn’t live up to the promising premise. The film has an irritating habit of wandering away from the main action to delve into fanciful ­subplots that have little to do with the clash of two powerful minds. The most egregious meandering deals with Freud’s daughter Anna, whom the film depicts as struggling with her own lesbianism, contrary to the historical Anna’s stance on homosexuality.

The main characters spend a lot of time asking each other questions, sometimes quite emotionally, but the protagonists offer little in the way of answers. Viewers familiar with the writings of the two men will catch snippets of real-life quotations in their ­fictitious conversation, but the dialogue seems more of a verbal collage than a true synthesis of their worldviews.