Directed By Angela Patton and Natalie Rae

The Plot – Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C. jail. A generation of youth bare the weight of mass incarceration on their childhoods. These wounds impair development and can last a lifetime. In-person visitation for these families has been systematically shut down across the US since 2014, replaced with video conference apps the families have to pay for. This unique program involves dance, touch and celebration that transcends the prison walls. On the inside, we watch the fathers go through a 12-week Fatherhood Training Program that prepares them for the intensity of the dance and the emotional fallout.

Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and adult language

Daughters | Official Trailer | Netflix (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Documentaries have a way of capturing the urgency and fragility of life in ways that fictional storytelling can simply only dream about, and while there have been plenty of documentaries about the flawed ways of the American penal system, none have hit me quite as hard as ‘Daughters’, which uncovers so much within a basic idea of this lifelong separation between fathers and daughters, all without losing sight of the emotionality that blinds audiences with humbling heart behind every corner. Patton and Rae’s decision to maintain a majority of the narrative from the perspective of the youthful victims not only conveys a responsibly bigger picture for everyone involved with incarceration, with prolonged pain and longing from both sides of the aisle, but also glances towards a refreshing insightfulness towards the perspectives of these children, who are typically used as nothing more than payoffs in stories pertaining to freedom, but here effortlessly capture the attention of the audience with such boldly commanding emotions that prove versatile for a youth forced to grow up without a male influence in their lives. Equally entrancing are the glances inside of the legislature, which points out more than a few idiotic ironies to what we as a society consider the rehabilitation process. This aspect doesn’t take too much time away from the focus of the narrative, but these knowledgeable tidbits do construct an overhanging cloud of irresponsibility that all but convey why so many prisoners relapse back into a world of crime, while behind bars, providing background fodder for the real life drama transpiring in a Washington D.C penitentiary, not far from where these laws and legislation go into effect, in the first place. Considering this Daddy Daughter dance has been around twelve years, with a 95% success rate of convicts not returning to prison, I would say that intimacy is the greatest factor in keeping convicts focused towards their proverbial eyes on the prize, but instead the film uncovers several systematic flaws, like telephone only interactions between convicts and families, which the families have to pay for, by the way, that are inhumane and animalistic, all for the sake of teaching a lesson to someone who is undoubtedly already learning. Patton and Rae mostly stay quiet in both direction and narration throughout the picture, which wonderfully allows life to unfold before itself in the depths of the experience, resulting in these candidly touching moments that undoubtedly did have me reaching for the tissues, especially while investing to one particular character, named Aubrey, who is the 5-year-old embodiment of charisma and innocence. Being that the film focuses on four respective families over the course of twelve weeks in anticipation towards this dance, each with unique situations and feelings pertaining to their distant fathers, it keeps the film from ever feeling repetitive or prolonging in the justification of its 108 minute run time, smoothly transitioning between each arc, with enough distinguishing personalities and backstory in the characters that makes each of them feel artistically diverse to the benefit of the engagement. There’s also ample time spent with these convicts during moments of therapeutic group reflection that served as my favorite moments of the entire film, all without getting too bogged down in the specifics of the backstories that resulted in their incarceration. Normally, this omission would bother me towards feeling scrubbing and sanitized towards the integrity of its characters, but here it never attains necessity in the depths of a father and daughter bond, especially since we only ever see them as the loving fathers who are crumbling at the seams inside. Considering our sociological perception of convicts are these hardened criminals, it’s refreshing to see those involved in the film express so many insecurities and vulnerabilities about something that should otherwise feel effortless, granting us a deeper sense into their psyche that proves how dedicated they are to the cause of rehabilitating themselves. Ultimately, because time is the greatest enemy to these families, it really weighs heavily on the respective ages of the children, evoking thought-provoking conversations internally about identity and familiarity that essentially sees these sides meeting all over for the first time again, all the while dissecting the powerfully stimulating ambiance of touch that ultimately serves as the biggest reminder to both the isolation of these longing convicts, as well as the lack of permanency in the moment of interaction that never feels long enough. In technical capacities, the film doesn’t get too saturated with distracting style to balance its substance, but all of the decisions by the production elicits a compelling presentation that subscribes to the overwhelming emotionality of this experience, particularly the cinematography from Michael Fernandez, and the enthralling score from acclaimed cellist, Kelsey Lu, who each flesh out this tenderness to the production that moves the movie miles. The visuals are commanded with a handheld depiction in photography that immerses the audience alongside the intimacy of these characters during the quietest moments, and though the naturalistic deliveries of these real people would be enough to captivate me, Lu’s stirring and strumming compositions imbeds an underlining gravitas to such heavy interactions that vividly brings to life all of the profound sentiments that I previously mentioned, all without eviscerating the authenticity of those moments with swelling volume of instrumentals that could easily override what’s audibly detectable in the integrity of the scene.

NEGATIVES

There’s barely anything to scoff at here, but one major problem that the film has pertains to the editing of its finished product, which tells the story of imbalanced halves between its narrative. As to where the first two acts of the movie build through this twelve week class involving the convicts, on a week by week basis, it simply abandons this structure about midway through, leaving a noticeable gap between the final five weeks of the class, which overstep most of the impending urgency of reunion that I think deserved to be built properly. Even stranger to this sentiment, the film still has around thirty minutes of run time left, after the Daddy Daughter dance concludes, as a means of imbedding a ‘Where are they now?’ epilogue to the film’s ending, and while I’m definitely more than curious where their respective stories currently sit, especially since the film reveals to have wrapped in 2022, it lingers a bit longer than I would’ve appreciated or expected, concluding the film on a bit of an ambiguous note that feels anticlimactic. In addition to this, my only other issues pertained to some of the sound editing and mixing feeling a bit sloppy during the dance sequence, primarily one such instance of goodbye between Aubrey and her father, which feels like they glued different sections of the conversations to wield one cohesive consistency. If the editing was slightly smoother, without cutting off the rhythms of the dialogue, then it maybe would’ve obscured such an obvious intention, but it unappealingly reminded me of reality TV shows that often do the same thing to forcefully construct a particular narrative, and it served as the single biggest distraction to what was otherwise one of my favorite cinematic experiences of the year.

OVERALL
‘Daughters’ is a poignantly beautiful film about lost time, and the unpredictably winding roads we walk to keep some of it bottled. With intimate brushstrokes of heart-wrenching humanity, Patton and Rae construct a seething indictment of institutional punishment that feels long overdue for a systematic update, in turn maintaining the focus on the victims of those who share a different kind of lifetime imprisonment, who serve as the proverbial keys to escape for their isolated heads of the household.

My Grade: 9/10 or A-