Berlinale 2020: Jarvier Bardem's performance in The Roads Not Taken elevates its lacklustre screenplay

The Roads Not Taken premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on 26 February. It is scheduled for a worldwide release on 13 March.*A writer, suffering from dementia, and his daughter, navigate the course of a tumultuous day in New York in British director-screenwriter-composer Sally Potter’s drama The Roads Not Taken. With an ensemble cast of Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning, Salma Hayek and Laura Linney, The Roads Not Taken tries to peek into the mind of a dementia patient.Potter told audiences at the Berlinale press conference that she wrote the story inspired by the life of her late brother who also suffered from dementia. She said sometimes she didn’t know “where is he going, he seemed so far away.”  She wanted to explore the mind of a person with dementia that to her seemed to sometimes “memory travel.”In The Roads Not Taken, Javier Bardem plays Leo — an ex-writer who is slowly losing his consciousness to dementia. Since the medical state of his condition is never discussed, it leaves the viewer to surmise the seriousness of the disease with the help of Bardem’s acting prowess.The film begins with Leo’s daughter Molly, played by the reliably dramatic Elle Fanning, arriving at his doorstep, to take him to a dentist and an ophthalmologist appointment. Petite Molly finds it hard to handle a tall muscular Leo (who is also losing his senses) but she soldiers on and grows increasingly exasperated as the day unravels.[caption id="attachment_8112771" align="alignnone" width="825"] Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning in a still from The Roads Not Taken.[/caption]Leo’s advanced dementia causes him to go on trips to the corners of his memories, where he conjures up images of his ex-wife Dolores, played by Salma Hayek. Life with Dolores in Mexico was a “co-dependence disaster,” the viewer is told. In Leo’s mind, however, he has intense emotional encounters with Dolores. In one of his other memories, he is on a Greek island trying to finish his book where he meets a young German girl whom he believes to have a striking resemblance to the daughter he abandoned.Even as its intention is earnest, The Roads Not Taken plays out incoherently, with these parallel narratives failing to create a wholesome picture of Leo’s life. In some cases, the tonal inconsistencies are palpable – even as the immigration experience is spoken about obliquely, the scene where Leo is accosted by a woman in Costco who screams at him to ‘go back to your country,’ comes across as needlessly brash.But what the screenplay can’t accomplish, the actors seem to have, to a large extent. Salma Hayek as the heartbroken ex-wife and mother of Leo’s lost child gives a powerful performance. Even in a small part, Laura Linney’s firecracker of an ex-wife Rita provides some comic relief.  Fanning as Molly is unwavering in her conviction that her dad is more than just a dementia patient. “Why is everyone treating dad like he’s not there,” she asks exasperated.Potter’s treatment of dementia in a whimsical manner doesn’t seem to benefit the movie, rather it runs the risk of reducing these episodes to mere flashbacks. The Roads Not Taken could have been a fine movie if the dementia angle was explored more thoroughly without falling for the tropes of literary affectation (evident even in the title) that feels more like the fetishization of a writer’s life.In one scene Molly is  forced to question her father’s garbled monologues.  “I don’t understand papa. I’m trying to see what you are seeing,” she says. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the film put the viewer squarely in Molly’s dilemma of incomprehensibility.