Jim Jarmusch's new anthology is a deeply pleasing, gently quietist triptych centered on family and the sense of mortality that arrives in middle age. The film focuses on the perpetual worry about elderly parents, guilt over infrequent visits, shifting sibling relationships, and the relief mixed with dissatisfaction on journeys home. The three panels take place in rural US, Dublin and Paris, with images and gestures that fortuitously echo each other. In the US story Mayim Bialik and Adam Driver play siblings visiting an apparently disordered father, Tom Waits, who may be slyly faking disarray while wearing an apparent Rolex. In Dublin Charlotte Rampling receives annual tea visits from two grown daughters, one portrayed by Vicky Krieps with pink hair.
Jim Jarmusch has made anthology films before: Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). In fact, he could claim to be the pre-eminent specialist in this now very unfashionable movie form. But with his new one, a deeply pleasing and gently quietist triptych on the subject of family, he is giving us something new and personal.
It's the sense of mortality and the gathering cloud of darkness over our heads as we enter middle age, a perpetual nagging worry about the health and happiness of our elderly parents, with the guilt and sadness of not going to see them, or seeing them only rarely, and the related feeling of closeness or perhaps the opposite with your siblings for whom these parents are the number one topic of conversation.
His place seems chaotic and on the verge of poverty, an instant source of worry to them both, and Jeff also reproaches himself with having given his dad money over the years. And yet in the course of their awkward visit, they are disconcerted to notice what appears to be a genuine Rolex on the old guy's wrist and there is evidence that their father is slyly faking his elderly disarray for opaque reasons of his own.
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