“There is no solution to the glorious and painful mess that is the family”

For ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’, The triptych with which the filmmaker managed to win the Golden Lion at the last Venice Film Festival had no notes but he was thinking of the actors he wanted. And there are old acquaintances of the American director, like T.om Waits, Adam Driver or Cate Blanchettbut also new collaborators like Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps, India Moore or Luka Sabbat. “My first idea was just a weird idea: ‘What would it be like if I wrote something where Tom Waits was Adam Driver’s dad?'” he says. And there the rest came out. Family, who you are in this environment, who you are outside. “I have to be very honest, family is not something I think about a lot. In my other films, in fact, there are very few references to family relationships. In my first film (the first important one in fact), “Strangers in Paradise”there is a distant cousin in Hungary. I don’t remember another family reference I dealt with. It wasn’t a big topic for me, but it’s something we all touch on at some point. “I just wanted to observe these characters in a familiar situation without judging them,” he explains. Jarmuschwhich ultimately resulted in a film about the effects we have on each other.

“We are always trying to define, limit and resolve our relationships and family dynamics. And I think there’s an inherent lack of curiosity about that impulse. There is no solution to the glorious, painful mess that is the family,” analyzes Cate Blanchett, who previously worked with Jarmusch in an ABC interview. “Coffee and cigarettes”. In ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’, she is the sister of Vicky Krieps, daughter of Charlotte Rampling. Off screen, she is also both, she is also a mother, which has made her change her view of the world. “Before having children, I don’t think I fully realized how much your position in the family, in relation to your siblings, even if you are an only child, influences the development of your personality. You often meet someone and ask, “Are you the youngest?” Are you the oldest? And you’re the middle child, right? I am, and I think that those in the middle undergo a lot of benign abandonment, which I find liberating, but I think that all mothers and all daughters are unique,” ​​explains the actress, for whom the film “is very soft and subtle and has an almost imperceptible underground side.”

When Jim Jarmusch called her, he asked her to play the character Krieps. They talked about it, but Blanchett asked her to play Timothea because there was a certain similarity between Lilith and her character in “Coffee and Cigarettes” and she thought she would experience something new, something fundamental for the actress when she participates in a project. “It’s a bit of active anthropology. By playing a character, you live someone else’s life instead of their relationships and concerns. “We are all the heroes of our own story,” says Cate Blanchett.

Also Jim Jarmuschalways hidden behind sunglasses, impregnable under his long forelock. With a particular sense of humor, he allows himself in his films to make jokes that, sometimes, only he understands, like the one about Rolexes. It also hides unique homages, this time to the skaters, giving them “the only effect in the entire film”. “I included some things in the script while writing it just for fun. This film is constructed with great care, it is more of a piece of music in three movements. They cannot be separated or change position. But like in music, there are often small themes that repeat themselves,” recognizes the director.

Contradict Fellini

A genius of musicality, the filmmaker defines himself as “a conductor” on the set and, as such, with a camera instead of a baton, he finds a unique music in the voices of his actors, which is why he even dared to contradict Federico Fellini. “Many years ago I had the chance to spend time with Fellini and I told him that I had refused to have my film dubbed into Italian. He said to me: “But this is ridiculous. If you double it, you can choose a face and another voice. But I like to keep them as one entity. “I don’t want to change the voice of Tom Waits or Charlotte Rampling,” he admits.

It sounds like a whim, but it’s not. Just like a table conversation is more than a table conversation. People often underestimate how difficult it is to make things look easy. “That’s the thing, it always has to feel like the first time and it still has to feel natural, even if it’s an artificial environment, because you want to feel like it’s the only decision a person can make. Every movie has its own challenge and it seems like three people sitting at a table is easy. But we didn’t have much time. We didn’t have much money. “We had to move incredibly fast and there were a lot of moving parts, props… But there’s a precision to the way Jim makes his films, he wants it to feel fresh and messy, but he doesn’t want it to be a messy experience for anyone.” Neither more nor less.