Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 110 minutes
Release Date: December 22nd, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director(s): Matthew Brown
Writer(s): Mark St. Germain and Matthew Brown / Mark St. Germain (play) / Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr. (suggested by The Question of God)

The surest indication of sanity would be the ability to change your mind.

A man of faith (Matthew Goode’s C.S. Lewis) visits a dying nonbeliever (Anthony Hopkins’ Sigmund Freud) at the latter’s behest to discuss the existence of God. Did this meeting actually happen? No one knows (the film confirms as much before the credits). But what would they have said if it did?

The premise behind Matt Brown’s adaptation of Mark St. Germain’s play is an intriguing bit speculative fiction wherein they mold what they know about both men into a spirited dialogue. However, since it is all hypothetical, can you ever really supply a concrete truth from the exercise? Can who these men are upon meeting actually change once they say their goodbyes? Not really.

The truth we as an audience find is therefore a generic one: mankind is a flawed species that ultimately has no one to blame for its inevitable demise but itself. That’s the one thing these two characters can agree upon, whether it’s a result of there being no God to save us or God simply watching to see if we finally save ourselves.

So, despite solid performances and an entertaining script built upon flashbacks that show Freud and Lewis’s own flaws and hypocrisies, the film mostly just moves in circles. It’s a series of “gotchas” that ultimately finishes with a knowing smirk settled upon both men’s faces to mark their enjoyment in the fact that they held their own to not lose the debate … even if no one actually wins it either.

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Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, Matthew Goode as C.S. Lewis in FREUD’S LAST SESSION. Photographer: Sabrina Lantos; courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.