Film Review: ‘His Three Daughters’ finds catharsis in death

When someone is dying, there tends to be a lot more talking than you might expect.

That’s one of the things “His Three Daughters” really nails about death – the constant conversation. When you’re waiting for a loved one to pass, you’re never really allowed to live in the weirdness of that particular kind of grief, but rather forced to constantly discuss the process. The film opens with one of those talks. The three sisters referenced in the film’s title sit in a circle, the camera cutting to each of them in turn as they discuss, or in some cases try to avoid discussing, how best to handle the passing of their father.

There’s Katie (Carrie Coon), the most practical, yet most hot-headed of the three, determined to make it through this with as little drama as possible (yet somehow causing the most drama). There’s Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), usually high as a kite and the one who has been taking care of their father through his final days (and feeling every bit of judgment from Katie for the choices she has made). And there’s Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), who has flown halfway across the country to be here, leaving her young daughter behind (only to be tasked with playing peacekeeper to these two).

Death is a funny thing, a fact that “His Three Daughters” (written and directed by Azazel Jacobs) often takes literally, the sisterly dynamics playing out in a way that is comically, sometimes frustratingly familiar to anyone with a sibling. Jacobs walks a taut line, the film’s emotions – anger, joy, sadness – all floating together in a jumble, one threatening to overtake the other at any given moment. “His Three Daughters” is grounded in the messiness of that feeling, but also grounded in the complex relationships between its three leads, all faced with the prospect of losing the one thread that binds them and terrified of what comes afterward. Through his finely-tuned handling of emotion and with three stellar performances at the film’s center, Jacobs delivers a meditation on death and connection that rings painfully, lovingly true.

It’s clear from the film’s beginning that the girls’ father, Vincent, has been slowly fading for quite some time – and everyone has different ways of dealing with the fall out. Rachel has been her father’s live-in caretaker, so when her sisters show up to help she disassociates. Katie doesn’t live too far away, but can barely bring herself to be there in the first place, and her intensity puts everyone else on edge. Christina tries to be as affable as possible and keep everyone else sane, but often at the expense of her own sanity with never a moment’s peace – in one scene, she erupts at both Katie and Rachel, her carefully composed peaceful expression morphing for a split second into the picture of rage.

You can see the fight Christina breaks up coming from a mile, resentment bubbling between Rachel and Katie from the start. There’s a reason the film is “Three Daughters” rather than “Three Sisters” – Rachel is Vincent’s stepdaughter from his second marriage, and that has caused a split between Rachel and Katie in particular. And the process of death, as it so often does, has only heightened their emotions.

If there’s a flaw within the relationship dynamics of “His Three Daughters,” it’s that Katie, particularly at the beginning, is deeply unsympathetic. Coon plays that severity with incredible force – even when she’s doing something as unassuming as writing, it feels like she’s about to claw through the paper, the table shaking under the force of her hand. Katie is quick to judge, particularly when it comes to Rachel. When she arrives at the house, she finds only bags of apples in the fridge. She assumes the worst, that Rachel hasn’t been adequately feeding their father, only to later find out that in his last mostly lucid days, apples were all he would eat.

But as the film goes on, and as angry as Katie’s behavior makes you on Rachel’s behalf, it also starts to feel uncomfortably, shamefully relatable. Katie can’t bring herself to be around her dying father, at least not by herself when she has to sit in the quiet of the moment. So, she finds things to complain about, finds problems to solve, and Rachel is the easiest target. It’s easier to berate Rachel for what she could have done better rather than face the fact that Katie wasn’t there in the first place, just as it’s easier for Rachel to ignore her sisters (and to some extent, her father) when there’s finally someone else around to shoulder the weight.

These small cracks lead to the unearthing of a thousand others – but, when you have nothing to do but sit around and talk as you wait for the inevitable, that unearthing can also lead to healing. Those conversations that nobody wants to have about the process of dying start to evolve into unwanted, but necessary, conversations about the sisters’ relationship over the years. Those conversations tend to boil down to the one thing they have in common; their father, and the prospect of losing him. What do they mean to each other once he’s gone? Christina shares a story with her sisters about one time she watched an old movie with their dad, and how upset he got about the way the film depicted death. “The only way to communicate how death feels is through absence,” Christina remembered him saying. “Everything else is just fantasy.”

It’s an interesting point for a filmmaker to make, particularly while operating in a medium that necessitates visualizing what death feels like. Real life never gives you the catharsis that film does, but with the end of “His Three Daughters,” Jacobs finds a way to provide the sisters the emotional release they’re looking for, the final push they need to find their way to each other via their father (played in one, rousing scene by Jay O. Sanders in an emotional tour de force of a performance). And yet, the film’s final moments return to that sentiment Elizabeth so beautifully articulated before – but finding peace in that absence rather than pain.

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