Father, Mother, Sister, Brother Review: When Nothing Happens and Everything Matters

A Movie Review by Marc Primo

Jim Jarmusch has long been fascinated by moments most storytellers rush past. Where others chase plot twists, he lingers on pauses. A car moving through winter light. A room filled with people who have nothing urgent to say. A stretch of silence that feels heavier than dialogue. These choices, often discouraged in creative writing classrooms, are his language. And for some audiences, that language can feel infuriatingly still.

Many viewers emerge from his films frustrated, insisting that nothing happens. That reaction is understandable. Jarmusch does not offer spectacle or emotional shortcuts. Yet his work quietly invites reconsideration, asking the audience to look again at ordinary human exchanges and notice what is usually ignored. His latest film, Father Mother Sister Brother, rests firmly in this tradition.

The film unfolds as a triptych, three separate stories connected by family ties and emotional distance. Each segment centers on adult children orbiting their parents, revisiting shared histories that are never shown directly. Instead of dramatizing past events, the film relies on conversation, implication, and memory. Audiences are introduced to these lives without context and must pay close attention to piece the story together on their own. Facts are slippery. What remains reliable is how the characters feel, or how they fail to articulate it.

In the first chapter, siblings Jeff and Emily travel through a frozen, unnamed region of the American East Coast to visit their widowed father. The drive itself takes up much of the opening, capturing the anxious energy that builds when grown children prepare to face a parent who keeps emotional distance behind politeness. Their father is not cruel or overtly cold; he simply refuses to go deep. When the siblings finally step inside his home, the conversation stays surface-level, every attempt at connection landing awkwardly and then dissolving.

The discomfort is familiar. Anyone who has visited a parent and felt both welcome and shut out will recognize it instantly. Humor slips in unexpectedly, particularly when concern about the father's health turns into a surreal misunderstanding about "drugs." The exchange flips expectations and hints that this man, so quiet and closed-off, contains contradictions his children may never fully grasp. The segment ends abruptly, leaving the sense that an entire unseen life exists beyond the frame's edges.

The second story moves to Dublin, where a celebrated novelist hosts her two adult daughters during their yearly visit. The annual nature of the reunion alone suggests unresolved tension. The mother's presence is calm but commanding; her questions feel sharp, even when spoken gently. One daughter presents herself as effortlessly successful, though subtle clues reveal that her confidence may be carefully constructed. The other daughter remains harder to read, quieter, seemingly locked in a competition for approval that began long ago.

Their interactions are layered with rivalry and performance. Achievements are announced and interrupted. Praise is scarce and ambiguous. The mother's demeanor raises questions rather than answers: is she intentionally withholding, or simply incapable of offering warmth in the way her children need? As with the first story, the film refuses to judge. Instead, it observes, allowing the audience to sense how deeply parental influence persists, even decades later.

The final segment takes place in Paris, following twins who have recently lost both parents in a sudden accident. They are left to sort through the physical remnants of a shared childhood, furniture, photographs, and personal objects, while navigating their grief. Much of the story unfolds in motion: driving through the city, talking without urgency, circling memories as they come.

This chapter carries a gentler emotional tone. The twins' bond feels easy and sincere, grounded in shared history rather than competition. As they talk, small realizations surface, about their parents, about themselves, about how memory reshapes the past. Simple statements land with surprising force, not because they are poetic, but because they are honest. In these moments, the film opens a quiet space for reflection on loss and fragility.

Across all three stories, the film demands imagination. It functions less like a conventional movie and more like minimalist theater or a collection of songs linked by theme. Rather than showing events, it shows people talking about events. In doing so, it challenges the familiar rule that cinema must always prioritize action over speech. Here, listening becomes the primary act.

This approach will not appeal to everyone. Some viewers may see the film as deliberately elusive or emotionally withholding. Jarmusch has never seemed concerned with broad appeal. His career suggests an artist guided by instinct rather than expectation. A longtime musician and filmmaker, he treats his movies like albums—variations on a mood, a rhythm, a set of ideas, rather than puzzles to be solved.

A quiet spiritual undercurrent runs through the film, blending acceptance of human limitation with tenderness toward human illusion. The film does not argue or instruct. Yet it carries the strange feeling that something meaningful is being shared beneath the surface, accessible only to those who stay attentive and patient.

Visual details deepen this effect. Production design, cinematography, and costume choices subtly communicate emotional hierarchies and unspoken alliances. Color echoes between characters. Objects recur across stories. None of it is explained. It doesn't need to be. The film trusts the audience to notice, or not.

Between the main chapters, abstract visual and musical interludes appear, suggesting transitions not just between locations, but between emotional states. These moments feel ritualistic, as if the film itself is pausing to breathe. Repeated symbols, a skateboarder gliding through space, and familiar luxury objects appearing in different contexts, hint at connections without defining them.

There are no clear answers here. No final statement. No tidy resolution. The viewer is left alone with their thoughts, asked to decide what resonates and what does not. That uncertainty can feel unsettling. Or it can feel unexpectedly moving.

For some, the experience may remain distant, like an intellectual exercise observed from afar. For others, the effect is cumulative and deeply personal. The film ends quietly. And for at least one viewer, that quiet was enough to open a flood of emotion, tears arriving only after everything had already been said, and unsaid.