Directed By Jim Jarmusch
Starring – Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik
The Plot – A carefully constructed family drama in the form of a triptych. The three stories all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parents, and each other. Each of the three chapters takes place in the present, and each in a different country.
Rated R for adult language
FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER | Official Trailer | Coming Soon
POSITIVES
Like the greatest directors before him, Jarmusch has conjured his own signature brand of storytelling that can easily be described as organically ambient, and with his latest film that tranquility and patience is on full display, making this an all-encompassing showcase for the talents of one of cinema’s most unconventional artists. Aside from the film refusing to abide by the laws of a typical three act structure, featuring long-form arcs and endearing pay-offs that reward such patience, the film is more of a meditative outlook on the expansion of shared universes, particularly those identifiably interchangeable aspects in set decoration and even dialogue that draw so many of us together, regardless of race, ideology, or anything else, and while the film’s structure pertaining to three different sets of unique characters and settings being individually enacted does leave slightly more to be desired in the overall landing, Jarmusch’s commentary on the value and stability of family goes a long way towards inspiring a sentimentality in the exploration, without coming across as compromisingly saccharine, all with Jim’s dry and spontaneous underlining humor channeling an awkwardness that somehow kept me glued to the complexities of these character dynamics, despite the direction of the narrative feeling consistently aimless at times. This is Jarmusch’s truest talent, as he illustrates the characters with an abundance of palpable lived-in depth that effectively materializes without the need for heavy-handed exposition to forcefully spoon-feed an intention, allowing us to interpret so much more about their feelings and insecurities with one another when they’re forced almost against their will to spend time and live up to the obligation of interacting in ways that keeps up their artificial fronts with one another. For this aspect alone, I found the opening arc involving Waits, Driver and Bialik to be among the movie’s single most compelling and even surprising part of the entire engagement, both with meticulous psychology in the dialogue of the characters, which Jarmusch crafts so methodically, but also the big reveal around the movie’s 35-minute mark, which bred a yearning momentum to see what transpires next, even having known that this was an episodic anthology of a film that deviates a couple of times throughout. Like Jarmusch’s previous films, however, there are some stylistic impulses that simultaneously work and detract away from the integrity of the production, but the beneficial side of the equation pertains to these stimulating overhead shots that serve almost as a chorographical means to both the body language of the characters, once identity has been deduced to limbs, as well as another way to visually convey the similarities of families, with only subtle variations on the table tops to convey that the intentional idea purely remains the same. In a lot of ways, I found myself lost in the imagery more than the interactions, as Jarmusch and cinematographers Frederick Elmes and Yorick Le Saux materialize a feast for the ocular senses that clearly values the vulnerabilities of characters around those who know every possible thing about them, and while the film definitely isn’t among Jarmusch’s the most creatively challenging or complex of films, in my opinion, that he’s ever shot, the sedation of surveilling the wandering eye of the lens works cohesively with the consistency of the movie’s establishing tone, registering perspective glances among the monotony in ways that are intentionally void of sincerity or synergy between them, regardless of the evidential love that still persists evidently in parental units whom these youths have no idea how to connect to. Being that this is an ensemble piece, there’s very little wiggle room for any performer to truly stand out among the rest, however I found the sibling chemistry between Driver and Bialik to synthetically enrich the tepidness of the opening arc, balanced firmly by Waits’ best impression of what feels like Bruce Dern’s character in Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska”. Driver has always been great at facially responding to the bizarreness of unforeseen responses around him, and with Waits’ frazzled demeanor ratcheting an isolated tenderness for the character, it offers Adam ample opportunity to serve as the eyes and ears of the audience, with precision in comedic timing that turns these throwaway lines of contention into home runs, every time he channels them repetitively.
NEGATIVES
With all pleasantries aside, it pains me to say that “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” is more of the same contention that I’ve felt from a majority of Jim Jarmusch films, especially with an aforementioned episodic structure that continuously loses momentum the longer it delves into a 105-minute runtime. Considering the film gets off to a solid start with the trio of Waits, Driver and Bialik steering the ship, it follows up matters with a painfully impersonal arc between Charlotte Rampling and her two on-screen daughters (Portrayed by Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps), and a strangely sensual plot between siblings (Played by Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) that has far too much sexual chemistry between its actors, failing to capitalize on anything that is even half as entertaining or indulgent as that opening act, and really creating a heaviness to the pacing that makes the film’s second half transpire with a complete lack of fluidity. I’m all for slow and methodical storytelling that reaches for sentimentality, if my interests are there, but my inability to connect with these characters, as well as their respective arcs not attaining any kind of a pay-off beyond Jarmusch’s intended commentary, really kept me from attaching to the film in ways that would normally have me craving for more, and it makes me wish that Jim didn’t divide these stories individually, in ways that requires him to constantly start anew with the momentum and characterization. Speaking of commentary, while Jarmusch effectively musters the meaning and irreplaceable value of family among his trio of assorted universes, one such observation pertaining to skateboarders feels shallowly incoherent among the rest of the director’s thematic impulses, with his feelings on those involved shifting sporadically between each of the established arcs. During the first act, Jarmusch illustrates them as a nuisance to society, making him feel like a crotchety old man scoffing at youths, yet in the other two acts they’re galvanized with poetic slow motion and glistening cinematography in ways that makes them feel almost angelic, and while I understand the intention was to show the similarities among these different people sharing this universe, these moments crafted an unnaturally pretentious outlining at the beginning of each arc, made all the worse by the repetition to exploit it that Jarmusch wasted no reservations capitalizing on. Finally, the inferior side to the movie’s aforementioned aesthetic choices pertains to some highly distracting driving sequences during the first and third acts, featuring some of the most obvious and distorting visual effects work that made this feel especially amateur for such an experienced veteran of the screen. This is because Jarmusch makes the conscientious decision to shoot the actors in the foreground of the scene with a medium shallow focus against a crystal clear greenscreen background, and when the two were blended together, it unintentionally created a blurriness to the backseats that renders a gnarly looking masked edge to the framing, polarizing the director’s intentional decision to focus more firmly on the outside world, at the cost of the seamlessness of the suspension of disbelief. What’s even stranger is that the driving scenes of the second act don’t contain the same visual technique similarities, instead being shot on location, and it makes Jarmusch’s direction feel like he handed the responsibilities over to a different director for that middle section, crafting a dejecting consistency to the movie’s finished product that took the attention and focus forcefully away from the storytelling where it belonged.
OVERALL
“Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” is a deliberately patient and sentimentally saturated eclectic anthology that zeroes in on the kinetic dynamics between a trio of dysfunctional families, with merely inconsistent results determining its fate. While the film is aided tremendously by a gifted ensemble of familiarly experienced faces committing themselves, as well as Jim Jarmusch’s uniquely ambient method of storytelling, the cheaply distracting production values and unappealing characters of the second and third acts nearly condemn it, leaving a wryly curious and regretfully understated finishing product that caters exclusively to fanatics of the director, and nobody else.
My Grade: 6.2 or C-