Life without father

For all the ticks and neuroses Nicolas Cage exhibits as guilt-ridden con artist in Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men,” nothing compares to the anxiety attack he has while waiting to meet his troubling teenage daughter (Alison Lohman) for the first time. Yet soon after, Cage has tapped into a whole new confidence game as a result of their stimulating interaction.

Likewise, there’s a wonderfully unexpected moment in Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” when Bill Murray opens up to Scarlett Johansson about the joys of fatherhood during their brief encounter in Tokyo. He plays a burned-out movie star shooting a whiskey commercial -- estranged from his wife and children -- and she plays a twentysomething hooked on philosophy and neglected by her husband.

Both are plagued by insomnia and instantly hit it off during a chance meeting in their hotel, then discover new possibilities as fish-out-of-water in the bustling neon metropolis.

But in between their excursions, during a quiet, vulnerable conversation, the actor humanizes his character with his own take on fatherhood, transcending the script, and transforming the re-energized man he plays into a sage and father figure. “It’s the most terrifying day of your life the day the first one is born,” Murray improvises before adding the blissful fillip, “ ... and they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.”

These are not isolated incidents. Fatherhood pervades movies in the fall lineup and beyond with imperative force. Michael Caine and Robert Duvall play eccentric and curmudgeonly brothers in “Secondhand Lions” who discover a sense of paternal purpose when they become caretakers for their abandoned nephew (Haley Joel Osment). By contrast, the absence of fathers is keenly felt in Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” in which Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon are clueless about exorcising demons from their past and saving their own kids from the same cycle of violence and despair.

And think back to last year, when fathers or father figures figured so prominently in “Road to Perdition,” “Minority Report,” “Gangs of New York,” “Catch Me If You Can” and “Evelyn.” Disconnected from their children, preoccupied with their professions, which were often dangerous, damaged men were pressed into action to fulfill their paternal duty.

It’s no coincidence that “Finding Nemo” is 2003’s most successful film. Aside from Pixar’s gorgeous computer animation and great storytelling, the poignant father-son theme resonated with viewers young and old. Then came “The Hulk,” “Capturing the Friedmans” and “Seabiscuit,” which explored the dark side of fatherhood that neglect and tragedy reveal.

Is it any wonder that Gregory Peck’s beloved Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird” was recently voted the No. 1 hero in the AFI’s latest 100 greatest poll?

In search of a parent

THERE’S definitely something about fatherhood in the cinematic ether. Call it a Sept. 11 wake-up call, backlash against the breakup of the family unit, the result of boomers grappling with mortality or that life has become too overwhelming to process without the guidance of a paternal elder.

“Seabiscuit” writer-director Gary Ross sees fatherhood as the movie’s emotional center. “Red [Pollard, the jockey played by Tobey Maguire] was abandoned at a young age during the Depression because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him. [Charles] Howard [the Seabiscuit owner played by Jeff Bridges] lost a child in an automobile accident, basically to the very machine and technology that had allowed him to become a self-made millionaire. What moved me was the opportunity to write about the need that these guys had to re-engage life in a way and get a second chance.”

Emotional awakenings and spiritual rebirth are at the core of the current emphasis on fatherhood. “Bo Goldman [who scripted “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”] once said that every great movie is about finding your father,” said “Mystic River” scribe Brian Helgeland. “In this film, you feel the absence of fathers in the three lead characters. It’s never talked about, but it haunts the story. The [Boston] neighborhood becomes a kind of substitute father.... It’s a dangerous place if you don’t fit in.”

The absence of fathers is confronted more directly in “Secondhand Lions,” reminding us that it’s an age-old problem rooted in the Bible, “Oedipus Rex” and “Hamlet.”

“When I was flailing around trying to figure out what this movie was about, I saw a documentary on Discovery Channel, which mentioned that 99% of men in prison had no father or an abusive father,” remarked Tim McCanlies, the writer-director of “Secondhand Lions.” “And I wondered if there is something in a boy growing up ... something that needed to be shaped. And so with the premise going in about a couple of old [Texans] who feel they have nothing left to live for and a young kid who needs men ... it became something I had never seen addressed in films: What is it that men teach boys? It coalesced into, ‘Just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe in it.’ ”

The film about tall tales speaks directly to its co-stars but from opposite vantage points. Duvall, who has played fathers on screen throughout his celebrated career (“The Great Santini” and “Tender Mercies”) without experiencing it firsthand, can only recall getting close to his own father once. “I never hunted, but one day we went squirrel hunting ... it was great. He used to call me Bernie. He said, ‘Bernie, you shoot there.’ And so I shot, and when I hit the squirrel late and jumped up, he got him up above. I never forgot it. “

Caine, by contrast, is the father of two, who, up until now, has never portrayed such a responsible father figure on screen. “Fatherhood,” he said, “is one of the reasons that attracted me to ‘Secondhand Lions.’ You can see the social fabric breaking down now, and it’s very important that we portray good fathers on screen to boys as well as girls. What struck me personally was being with Haley. He himself is in a high-risk career as an actor. And he’s utterly safe and secure in who he is. Considering how close he is with his father, Haley’s a supreme example of why this is so important.”

Confronting feelings

LOOKING ahead to holiday films, the distancing of fathers from their kids because of misunderstanding, fear or abandonment underlies Jim Sheridan’s “In America,” Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions,” Ron Howard’s “The Missing” and Tim Burton’s “Big Fish.”

“It’s the perfect type of film to get over grief,” Sheridan said of his semi-autobiographical movie, co-written by his two daughters, Naomi and Kirsten, about an Irish family that immigrates to Manhattan after Sept. 11 because of the tragic loss of a child. “I just wondered if that moment is gone in America, but I don’t think it is. As much as terrorists are attached to the suicide culture, it’s a very bad thing for anybody to be attached to the dead culture” -- particularly the way the father in the movie is.

For “The Missing,” in which Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett must resolve bitter differences while searching for his abducted granddaughter in the American Southwest of 1885, Howard was inspired by the strong women in his life. “It’s so much about Cate’s character dealing with what she thought she understood about her father and comes to understand about him and what she does about the emotional scars.”

The same holds true for Billy Crudup’s emotionally scarred journalist in “Big Fish.” With fatherhood nearing, Crudup confronts his own dying father (Albert Finney) about the tall tales he’s been told all his life, so he can finally understand the old man.

Burton, who recently lost both of his parents and awaits the arrival of his first child with actress Helena Bonham Carter, said that the film forced him to confront his own feelings about fatherhood. “It’s one of the strangest relationships because it’s intertwined. I think when you lose a parent, especially when you were never quite that close, you get the feeling of a connection that was never really made, and then you just sort of drift back and think about this weird dynamic that you can’t really put into words. Hopefully, the climax ... will just sort of sneak up on people.”

Reminding us, perhaps, that, although reconciliation between fathers and children is often unattainable in real life, at least the movies offer the opportunity for catharsis.