Review: Father Mother Sister Brother – All in the family

Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Starring Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling

6/10

In the world of cinema, auteur filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is regarded as the king of cool. Though given his last few films, he should be instead considered the king of calm, as his new film here is firmly on the zen side rather than the trendy side. This makes for a pleasurable and cleansing viewing, though also one that feels malnourished and skeletal with how it engages with a theme as lofty as family.

The first story centres around the Father (Tom Waits), who lives in a comfy-looking cabin out in the snowy woods, which his children Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) have to traverse to get to. They arrive, have some tea, then leave, and there isn’t really much else to say.

The Mother story is rather similar, though gender-swapped: the Mother (Charlotte Rampling) has her children Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) over to her house in London. They arrive, have some tea, then leave, and there isn’t really much else to say.

The Sister Brother story is a bit different: it shows siblings Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) in Paris, bringing closure to their mother’s life as they attend to her belongings and sift through the memories together. This is probably the best of the three, and the one that has at least the most pathos.

Although this film is engaging enough to captivate your attention, it’s unfortunately not interesting enough to keep its stories going. With the amusing way the Father story ends, you’d expect there to be more to it as it’s just starting to get interesting with its main character. But instead, it just comes to a premature conclusion, feeling more like a catalyst for further characterisation rather than a (sort of) twist ending to a short film.

Feature films made up of short films (like a triptych, in this case) can feel like less than the sum of all their parts. Jarmusch has stumbled upon this before, with a film like Night on Earth not feeling like each short is adding to the overall feature. When you get real masterful filmmakers working at full capacity like the Coen Bros did with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (also starring Tom Waits), each film can feel special on its own whilst also feeling like they’re adding to the overall structure of the feature as a whole. It’s hard for the shorts in this film to feel that way when they’re so derivative of each other.

Father Mother Sister Brother aims for an extremely leisurely and zen kind of storytelling, trying to capture the true living experience of everyday life in a way that Perfect Days succeeded with, but ends up coming across as more unsure and unfinished. There may be hidden sustenance in a film that’s wholly about family that is on the brink of awkward comedy with how restrained it is, but it ultimately comes across as satisfying as a glass of water (one of the riveting topics that appears in each story).

DAVID MORGAN-BROWN