Jim Jarmusch presents three stories about parents and their grown up children.
Jim Jarmusch started out as kind of an eccentric indie filmmaker, but over a career spanning 45 years, he’s become a legendary eccentric indie filmmaker. His latest movie is called Father Mother Sister Brother. It’s an anthology film, three short stories on a similar theme, put together to make one movie. This is a work of a mature artist—it’s about adult children and their parents. It’s composed largely of talking, but most of the humor and significance lie in what is not said.
“Father,” the first story, begins with an adult brother and sister, played by Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik, driving through the snowy New Jersey countryside to visit their father. Their conversation in the car reveals some discomfort about the visit. The brother admits that he has occasionally sent money to their father to deal with house repairs and whatnot. When they get to the house, we meet the father, played by the excellent Tom Waits—a wiry old man, kind of a hippie. Jarmusch’s writing combined with the brilliant casting really works here sustaining a steadily dry humorous tone. The father acts a little embarrassed facing his two rather straitlaced children. The daughter seems to disapprove of him, we know from comments the son and daughter make when they’re alone. “He’s always been a character,” she says. “Really mysterious.” Her brother seems to agree, although his way of behaving with their father is more respectful, albeit stand-offish. After they wrap up their visit and leave, we stay with Waits, and suddenly our perspective shifts. We’ve been fooled into sharing the kids’ assumptions about him. This whole section is so perfect that I’m tempted to say Jarmusch saved the best for first, which is funny, I guess, but actually unfair.
“Mother,” the second story, is about an elderly mother in Dublin, played by Charlotte Rampling, who’s expecting a rare visit from her two adult daughters, Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps). Tim, as she’s called, has her car break down on the way. Lilith arrives at the mother’s house first. She’s the image of a rebellious daughter, with pink hair and claiming to be a kind of famous influencer. But in an earlier sequence we see that she’s concealing her actual situation. Tim, arriving after taking care of the car trouble, is a more conventionally dressed woman, wearing a perpetual nervous smile, always trying to act as if everything’s fine. These three amazing actresses sit around a lunch table, with the humorous context being that their characters can’t think of much to say. There are awkward silences. The situation is oddly funny, but also chilly and sad.
The third story, “Sister Brother” is about a black American sister and brother, fraternal twins, visiting their recently deceased parents’ apartment in Paris, where they grew up, just to be there one last time. The two marvelous young actors, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat, convey the amused affectionate intimacy of close siblings. It’s the most leisurely of the three stories, the most meditative, and also the most moving. Now we see, instead of the miscomprehension, inner struggle, and distance in the first two stories, a loving and grieving for parents that are no longer alive. What’s not said in Father Mother Sister Brother becomes manifest: the closeness we once avoided is what we now wish we could have.
