His Three Daughters review: family fractures & final goodbyes
No matter how prepared we may think we are or how resilient we think we are, the loss of a parent is always a profound and painful experience. This is why His Three Daughters (HTD) not only resonates emotionally with everyone, especially with people who have siblings. It reflects a core truth about existence.
It is commendable that now and again, a film comes along that delivers a deeply emotional that not only hits but stays in the mind and heart, until long after. It diffuses into your own personal story or connection, perhaps helping you sort your feelings that get evoked by the story of the film. I believe a good piece of drama should do that. His Three Daughters is the kinda film that delivers a complicated slice of issues that every family goes through when a parent is terminally ill and siblings are responsible for their care. Originally, it premiered over a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023 and has generated lots of early Oscars buzz.
There is the surreal awkwardness, anger, fear, sadness, resentment and the challenge of getting along with siblings not on the same page as you, questioning their moves and decisions, answering questions for your own decisions, while on one side you feel, they pass away peacefully, and on the other you wish, through some miracle they get cured and everything becomes alright. At the end of it all, which is inevitable, you realise that time was most precious.
This chamber drama that covers only three and a half days in the lives of three siblings, but may feel like a longer time period has been covered, has an exceptional script and a knockout cast in terms of performances. The film stars Carrie Coon as Katie, Elizabeth Olsen as Christina, and Natasha Lyonne as Rachel, the three very different daughters [from each other] of Vincent (an outstanding Jay O. Sanders), receiving hospice care at home in the final stages of cancer. Jacobs wrote HTD specifically with Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne in mind.
“When Katie came out a certain way, I realised Carrie has a similar strength,” he told Netflix. “The way Christina is a different character who is trying to keep the peace between her sisters, I’ve seen that quality in Lizzie’s previous work. And the same thing with Natasha being this kind of laid-back person the way Rachel is.” The film
Katie, the eldest sister is accustomed to taking on the parent/dominant/leader’s role and wants everything in order, including a Do Not Resuscitate order, as Vincent is not “alert enough to sign one.” Then there is the highly-sensitive Christina, a former free spirit with a kid back home.
In contrast to the high-strung Katie, is Rachel, the weed-smoking third sister who is always high. The sisters don’t realise that Rachel is the way she is because she has been the one who lived with Vincent day in and day out, as his disease progressed, pandering to his whims, fancies, likes, dislikes, and medical and emotional demands and in the process absorbing all the stress into her own system. Someone who lives with aging parents or closer to them would realise while siblings living far away are oblivious with day to day issues.
Everyone grieves in very different ways. Likewise as Vincent is on his deathbed, his daughters are doing what each feels is the best for her at this delicate time. Katie is micromanaging everyone's lives, the kitchen and the house, Christina is doing yoga, and Rachel is smoking more and more.
Why the fridge has two huge bags of old apples while Rachel sits smoking weed and the kitchen is neglected and clearly not her top priority becomes a point of contention with Katie. Little does the controlling elder sister know that there was a point when all that Vincent would ask for and eat were apples and it had nothing to do with Rachel’s reluctance to go out for groceries? Smoking weed was also her escape from day to day stresses while the other sisters who lived far away had more organised lives.
“Rachel is the sister who is genuinely showing up the most for our father, but she’s getting flak because she hasn’t had any tangible life achievements, these imagined or constructed metrics by which we identify a success or failure,” Lyonne told Netflix. “Over the course of the movie, she develops the skill to stand up for herself and say, ‘Hey, that’s not the full picture.’ ”
Not only the sisters misunderstand her personality and overlook the reasons of why it was the way it was, they also resented that Rachel would get the house Vincent lived in, whereas Rachel didn’t give two hoots. Jacobs who wrote and directed the film tactfully handled the ugly feelings to do with succession issues that come between siblings when a parent is dying.
Katie treats her badly, but Rachel has learned to stay quiet and not rock the boat — a common trait for a sibling who feels like an outsider with her sisters her entire life and knows the real stuff that went on closer to the parents’ illness.
The characters are so rich and finely written that you almost want this to be a series and not the hour and 41 m that it is. But then there is no soapy melodrama even when the sisters are rough with each other. There are memories, fights, arguments, coldness, hurt and curiosity depicted — all that is a part of sibling lives when people don’t understand or refuse to understand each other, even though they want to at some subconscious level.
Sometimes, it is hard to watch the way grief takes hold of the tiny apartment where the three sisters find themselves. There are funny moments, arguments that tell about their pasts and the state of their minds as their father’s death looms.
All three actresses are extraordinary in their roles. And then arrives long-time actor Jay O. Sanders to steal the cake. As Vincent, he delivers a mind-blowing monologue that reveals a man’s instinctual anxiety and vulnerability, for he knows he doesn’t have much time to live. I watched this scene spell-bound. No, it is nothing like what is usually dished out in cinema from the subcontinent where an ailing elderly dies bequeathing his/her wealth and makes some tough demands from people who have already had it pretty tough! Someone is emotionally blackmailed to marry someone unsavoury or to marry off an offspring [against his/her wishes] to some unsavoury person. Vincent accepts death and realises that not one moment should be wasted.
In a surprising twist towards the end of the film, Vincent sits up in his armchair, startling his daughters who had lifted him from bed for a selfie. Grabbing a drink, he revises Katie's obituary, revealing a long-held secret. Okay, no spoilers here.
As the doleful atmosphere in the living room brightens, Vincent reflects on his life, expresses his love for New York and recalls a missed connection with a woman named Bliss, who taught him the power of love and helped him understand his own regrets and guilt.
Finally, Vincent's spirit leaves his body, his eyes meet in a final, haunting gaze. His spirit appears slightly frightened, while his body seems filled with anger and resentment. The lingering image of Vincent's angry expression leaves a lasting impression.
Jacobs wanted his film to capture how people’s lives take them away from one another, only to bring them back together at the most infelicitous moments. “I’ve found time moving in inexplicable ways in the end-of-life experiences I’ve had with family and friends,” Jacobs told Netflix. “One thing that should take minutes seems to stretch out way longer, and other moments collapse into one another.”
HTD makes you want to reflect back on life and do an inventory of what must be said or not said or what could have been said and was not said to others in the family. Reality is complex as it is and gets more so when death of person in the family is imminent and you can be so prepared yet it may hit you with a force that leaves fragments behind.
Despite being about death, the film burst with life. It made my think of how and when my parents passed away. It made me think of how I had believed previously that I wouldn’t be able to deal with the loss of my parents, but how one gets over just about everything, as time is indeed a healer, and that there is no other option but to accept death. The world is different without them, but still spinning on its axis. Nothing came to a stop. As I pushed sad thoughts away, I wondered who finds an easier closure to the loss of parents, those who live closer to them or those who live at a distance.
HTD is about the struggle to find these answers before it all ends and the answers become irrelevant. Somewhere in between tragedy and comedy, the film is honest, powerful, painful and poetic.