Starring: Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps, Indya Moore and
Luka Sabbat
Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
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im Jarmusch’s films are not for everyone. His films usually just follow everyday people talking and living their lives, without much spectacle. And yet, with his latest, Father Mother Sister Brother, a return to his anthology framework after 2003’s Coffee and Cigarettes, Jarmusch fails to hit any particularly human chord throughout the film’s three segments. Following three different families reuniting and trying to avoid telling each other anything truthful or meaningful, Jarmusch leaves so much unsaid that all we’re left with is a dull silence and actors too good for the material exchanging glances. Instead of burrowing into how inherently difficult it can be to have family members — as well as be one — Father Mother Sister Brother is a drab drama that relies so much on inference and silence that the script could’ve easily been five pages long. It’s not a completely futile exercise, with some moments that rise to Jarmusch’s usual level, but it’s a difficult film to find anything tangible to hold on to.
The movie is split into three different chapters. The first, titled “Father,” features siblings Emily (Mayim Bialik) and Jeff (Adam Driver) driving to their father’s (Tom Waits) house to visit him after some time. The brother and sister have done well for themselves, but their father has had to call upon them for financial aid. He lives in, as Emily calls it, “Nowheresville,” as they pull up to his dilapidated house in Jeff’s hybrid Range Rover. References to their mother’s death and father’s past of drug addiction apply some weight to their situation, and there’s a distinct awkwardness between the father and his two kids. Emily remains cold to the father, who obviously was never a stellar parent, while Jeff, despite being divorced and in his 40s, is desperate to please his dad.
The next chapter takes us to Dublin, where an English Mother (Charlotte Rampling) is holding her annual afternoon tea with her two daughters. The nervous and gentle Timothea (Cate Blanchett) is running late on account of her old car, while the free-spirited and irreverent Lilith (Vicky Krieps) plans to lie about almost everything in her life. Their mother is a published writer living in a beautiful house in an affluent area of Dublin, and has prepared a decadent display of pastries and sandwiches, paired with fine chinaware for tea. And despite how much they keep smiling and complimenting the food, the three women are unable to say anything fully truthful to each other. It becomes a joke from Jarmusch to have the women consistently sipping their tea so as not to have to speak.
The third and final chapter encapsulates both brother and sister, as twin siblings, Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat), visit their childhood home in Paris in the wake of their parents’ untimely death. Billy has organised the moving of all of their parents’ belongings, while Skye fled to New York in an attempt to escape her grief. But now, reunited, the twins find solidarity in each other as they spend the time memorialising their parents’ lives, looking through old pictures, and retelling stories. This chapter feels the most reminiscent of Jarmusch’s earlier work, as it follows two compelling characters engaging in conversations that feel both ordinary and powerful.
Silence and the power of what’s not being said can fuel intimate dramas and paint a realistic portrait of human interaction, especially between families who are trying to present a facade of happiness. The first chapter undoubtedly does this best, as Bialik and Driver establish a lived-in, tacit connection, conveying meaning through brief glances and subtle body language. It is jarring to see a father and siblings — who seem fairly happy in their own lives and get on well together — flounder so much when trying to speak to each other. It’s the second chapter, with the three women in Dublin, that represents the movie’s biggest failures. Again, the three women don’t have much to say to each other, but there’s not enough silent acting going on for us to infer anything about these characters. The third chapter with the twins is by far the best because the characters get to actually talk! After an hour of cold silence, Sabbat and Moore bring an effusive, lyrical quality to their conversations that you’ve been feeling deprived of up until this point.
And what’s funny is that despite there being very little of it, the dialogue we do get is notably stilted. Jarmusch’s script has difficulty matching the same restrained approach as every other part of the film, and the result is dialogue that feels jarringly direct and obvious. In trying to establish the family history in the movie’s first chapter, Emily says almost robotically, “Remember mom’s funeral? That wasn’t good.” When Skye walks into the final room of the apartment with a discarded mattress and starts to cry, it’s fairly obvious what the room used to be. And yet, Jarmusch has Skye state for the record, “Mom and Dad’s room.” In a movie aiming for as much realism and reservation as possible, these moments work to bring the audience further out of this world, making it feel almost aggressively staged.
However, credit needs to be given to Jarmusch’s work in shooting and filming the movie, which never wavers, even with his rough script. Despite falling in the movie’s weakest chapter, in terms of showcasing Jarmusch’s directing skills, the film’s centrepiece is the afternoon tea scene.
Jarmusch and veteran editor Affonso Gonçalves make it feel like we’re watching a high-stakes poker game, constantly cutting between the women’s changing expressions and a birds-eye view of the decadent, polished table. For all the movie’s misgivings, Jarmusch, together with his cast, does succeed in offering the film some semblance of momentum even when there’s little to nothing happening, which, for better or worse, seems to be the director’s specialty.
Starring an ensemble cast of both Jarmusch regulars and newcomers, the performers of Father Mother Brother Sister can’t be faulted — for the most part. Tom Waits excels with his trademark, gruff voice as a dishevelled father trying to keep together what remains of the family he helped tear apart, while still maintaining an air of distrust. Bialik and Driver feel perfectly in tandem as siblings who take different approaches to their relationship with their father, doing the most with their limited dialogue. Vicky Krieps, unsurprisingly, is a crucial source of warmth against Rampling’s classic austerity, as one of the more relatable characters in the film. What is surprising, though, is that Cate Blanchett’s performance is the most ridiculous out of the entire cast. You’re already trying to understand why Jarmusch is staging three women cosplaying a royal visit in the heart of Dublin, and then Blanchett arrives doing an impression of a frazzled governess in an Agatha Christie miniseries. Her portrayal of Timothea feels so tonally out of sync with the entire film, adding to the chapter’s oddly anachronistic feel.
Moore and Sabbat fare much better, both bringing a tender yet wounded history to their relationship. The scenes of them reminiscing over their childhood or trying to plan their future without their parents in a cafe are when Jarmusch is at his most comfortable. Moore and Sabbat’s performances, despite getting some heavy-handed lines of their own, offer the audience the most open and honest insight into their characters’ history.
As someone who comes from a large Irish family where each person loves to chat as much as the next, I was initially interested in peering into the lives of those who find talking to their family members a colossally difficult feat. However, Jarmusch’s attempt to “show, not tell” is taken a little too far when 75 percent of the movie is made up of characters sitting together silently. Father Mother Sister Brother does have little pockets of Jarmusch’s genius scattered throughout, but not enough to make up for how unfulfilling the entire experience is.
– Courtesy: Collider.com
Rating system: *Not on your life * ½ If you really must waste your time ** Hardly worth the bother ** ½ Okay for a slow afternoon only *** Good enough for a look see *** ½ Recommended viewing **** Don’t miss it **** ½ Almost perfect ***** Perfection