In recent decades, not only have we killed God, as Nietzsche has explained, we’ve also started to eradicate fathers. These days, we talk about them with nigh-on obsessive assiduousness, with the words paternalism and patriarchy pervading public debate, associated with the idea of violent male dominance. But what about their sons? After the anti-genealogical revolt and attempts to escape vicious circles, we’re now lamenting the absence of fathers and their tendency to abdicate. And literature and film have dutifully examined the complexity and contradictions of affective codes, revealing the strength and fragility of family ties. This is precisely what twenty-seven-year-old Ronan Day-Lewis does in his first work, Anemone, which was presented in a premiere in the New York Film Festival at the end of September - having previously screened in London’s BFI and claimed Best First Film in Rome’s Alice nella Città line-up - and which is due for release in Italian cinemas on 6 November via Universal Pictures International Italy and in the UK on 7 November via Universal Pictures International UK. For the director himself, Anemone represents a crossover between cinema and real life: his three-times Oscar-winning father Daniel Day-Lewis co-wrote the screenplay with his son, Ronan, and the film also sees the former returning to acting for the first time following an eight-year absence.

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Ray Stoker, a former British soldier who’s confined himself to the forests of northern England on account of an alleged “war crime” carried out while fighting the IRA during the first troubles in Northern Ireland. One day, his brother Jem (Sean Bean), who lives in Sheffield with Ray’s wife, Nessa (Samantha Morton), and her teenage son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), climbs onto his Honda Africa Twin and pays Ray a visit. Brian is showing signs of distress which is increasingly sliding into anger; he almost beat another boy to death after he teased him about his father who left before he was born. Jem insists that Ray should return home and “take up the space” he’s renounced. In short, the son, Telemachus, needs his absent father, Ulysses.

In the heart of the forest, the two brothers engage in a dialectic corps à corps, dredging up each and every ghost of the past, together with the scars left by IRA bombs which caused carnage in pubs. These are memories which Ray can’t forget: a violent father (who grew the titular anemones, ironically) and the sexual abuse carried out by a priest called Father Rippon (“we’ve never been lucky with fathers, have we?”, he concludes, sarcastically). He mocks his brother Jem for his unshakeable faith. Life has taught Ray not to believe in anything anymore. He gives a detailed, lingering account of his childish revenge on Father Rippon, proving the director’s awareness of the importance of religion when tackling a family drama set in northern England.

The two brothers’ lengthy confrontation is fortified by the film’s score, composed by Bobby Krlić whose guitar is reminiscent of The Cranberries distinctive sound: a mix of dream pop, Irish folk music and Brit rock. Ben Fordesman’s photography plays to the sensitivities of this director who, before trying his hand at film, made a name for himself in the visual art world, using oil pastels on canvas in a style he himself has described as "punk romanticism". Great though at times excessive care has been taken over the film’s images, and the composition of elements within the space; in fact, the pace is so slow, it works against any kind of coherent dramaturgical construction. The two long monologues delivered by the ever-extraordinary Daniel Day-Lewis are diluted in a prolonged exploration of the loss and recovery of his identity as a father, which the director concretises by way of the two brothers’ cathartic journey through nature. Overall, Anemone would have benefitted from tighter editing and fewer overly contemplative moments and heavy-handed, highly symbolic visions.

Anemone was produced by British firms Granada Films and Absinthe Film Entertainment in league with US outfits Focus Features and Plan B.