Written by Lara Rosales
Directed by Azazel Jacobs, His Three Daughters perfectly depicts how intricate, chaotic, and childish human relationships can be. It doesn’t matter if you’re 5 or 50, you will always find a reason and a way to get into a screaming match with your siblings. And that is exactly what the sisters do until they realize that it was love that pushed them to act this way.
As someone who very recently had to watch her father and his brothers make decisions for their sick father, I understand first-hand that it is not an easy task. Watching someone you love slowly fade away is one of the most painful experiences life has to offer (or to challenge us with). His Three Daughters is a perfect portrayal of this time in life.
Even though an illness is looming and hiding literally behind the other door, as viewers, we don’t see it until the very end – until the ailment has done what it came to do. It seems Jacobs’ intention is to never take the focus away from the sisters and their relationship. The three sisters, Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), and Katie (Carrie Coon), are the only characters the audience truly seems to know. Anyone else who comes onto the screen is there to remind us of their sick father, having been connected to him in one way or another.
*Spoilers ahead*
All three of them portray very different women. In the end, it is Christina who mentions that they all have different versions of the life they shared in the same apartment with the same father. But that is exactly the essence of the movie. They come together because their father is dying without truly realizing they bring a different father and experience to the table. Even though they are sisters (or stepsisters, if one wants to get technical), they didn’t have the same life.
The movie yells this in viewers’ faces several times. The idea is that we occupy the role that people give us in their lives. Rachel is a stoner in their eyes because that is the role they put her in, and because of that, so does the audience in the beginning. It isn’t until Benjy (Jovan Adepo) speaks up for her that we understand the reality of her life. But then again, that role is the one she occupied because her father’s illness put her in that place.
An excellent example is the three of them trying to decide what to write in their father’s obituary. They can all name different things because he was different in the role they each gave him. Even though the title was the same (dad), their experience wasn’t. When one dies, one is remembered for their role in the other person’s life. Maybe that is the absence that Christina mentions their father talked about. Who truly were you if you became who people wanted you to be?
The movie inevitably ends with the father’s death, but there is a moment before that makes viewers wonder what truly happened. Did the mind win, and the father got up one last time to have a true conversation with their daughters? Was that a combination of what the three of them wished would happen? Or was it the father’s hallucination wishing he could have given more to his daughters?
The viewers might never know, but that is the only moment in which the movie feels like a movie. Before that, His Three Daughters feels like watching a play in the theater. How each scene focuses only on one space, the actors close together, barely letting us see what’s beyond them, makes the viewer feel like they are in the apartment with them. The emotions you get are as raw as they would in a theatrical performance (again due to the magnificent performances).
The movie itself mentions that films don’t usually get death right. However, maybe this one comes the closest. The cruel reality of having to make decisions for one’s parents, taking care of them, watching them die away, and having to heal wounds from the past while doing so is very much what most people go through. Some may even have a hallucinating moment with all the things they wish they could have said.
All in all, His Three Daughters is a raw, chaotic, and emotional depiction of what relationships between siblings look like. It is a movie about pain, grief, and questioning oneself. It is an excellent showcase of what acting talent is. As incredible as Coon and Olsen are, the movie belongs entirely to Lyonne, who manages to steer away from her beloved Orange is the New Black character.
Photo credits to Vanity Fair, Variety, and Rolling Stone.