Facing Death

His Three Daughters a film by Azazel Jacobs.  With Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Jovan Adepo, Jay O. Sanders.  Streaming on Netflix.  *****

His Three Daughters is a sleeper, a Netflix original that we watched because we were fishing around for something to watch on a Saturday night, and it had just been reviewed in the Times.  The acting is superb, but the script made the movie for me.

Three women have come together to be with their father Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) as he is dying.  For most of the movie, he’s represented by an open bedroom door (so the women can hear if anything goes wrong) and a beeping sound, showing he’s still alive.  The apartment seems large for Manhattan, but not lavish; Vincent was a government functionary who has managed to keep it rent-controlled.  His oldest daughter Katie (Carrie Coon) has moved to Brooklyn and is the mother of a wayward teenager; his youngest, Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is out on the west coast, and has young children; the middle girl, Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), has been living with her father and taking care of him.  She’s the wayward daughter of this family, smokes dope and bets heavily on sports, channel surfing among games she has money on.

That fact enrages Katie, her bossy controlling older sister, who seems furious at life, especially the fact that she can’t control her daughter (who doesn’t actually appear.  All we hear is her mother screaming at her over the phone).  She takes out her rage on Rachel; the movie opens with one of her diatribes (while the camera focuses strictly on her and her body language).  Rachel is cowed by her big sister, mostly passive in interactions.  Christina has adopted a West Coast vibe, trying to reconcile her two sisters (good luck with that) and keep things on an even keel.

What we only piece together as the movie goes on is that Rachel is a stepsister.  Vincent had the two girls, far apart in age, before his wife died, then fell in love with another woman, who had a (rather wild) daughter between their two ages.  So Rachel, who never knew her birth father and lived for years with just her mother, came into this family with the ball-busting older sister and the trying-to-be-mellow younger one.  Both of Vincent’s birth daughters flew the coop.  Only his stepdaughter remained.

What Katie has always assumed—Christina seems to have this idea too—is that Rachel has spent her life mooching off her father and will now inherit his rent-controlled apartment.  How unfair is that!  She and Christina are the real daughters, and their stepsister gets the sweet deal.  In Katie and Christina’s defense, it’s difficult to know how Rachel makes ends meet, unless she is one of the great sports bettors in history (gambling is not world-renowned as a good way to make a living.  See Bukowski, Charles).  When some random black guy shows up to watch the games with her, that sets both sisters off.  Her father is dying, and she lets a total stranger in the apartment.

But he’s not a stranger; his name is Benjy (Jovan Adepo), and he’s either her boyfriend or close friend.  He also considers himself Vincent’s friend; apparently they watched games together.  He’s the first to let the sisters know that, while they’ve been off living their lives, it’s Rachel who’s been taking care of their father, and who really cares for him (Katie doesn’t even get over much from Brooklyn).  And when Rachel finally stands up to her sisters, she lets them know that she’s fine with abandoning the apartment if that’s what they want; she doesn’t see Vincent as a stepfather, but as the only father she ever had, and that—though she does have trouble facing his death; she goes into the sickroom the least—she loves her father, and always has.  She’s not there to mooch.  She’s there out of love.

The movie’s most extraordinary, almost surreal moment, comes at the end, when Vincent gets out of his sickbed and come to the living room—to die, apparently—and becomes not just a beeping sound but a living, (barely) breathing human being with his own take on things.  This is a daring shift in the movie, which I shouldn’t talk about too much, but it succeeds beautifully, and puts a cap on the whole thing.  What we’ve seen all along is three girls with their viewpoints, but Vincent has a larger one.  He’s not God, quite, but he’s a loving, caring father who’s about to die.  He sees more than they do.

His Three Daughters is a moving study of family dynamics, beautifully told.  The script and direction are both the work of Azazel Jacobs, a new name to me.  (My wife and I were stunned that this story was created by a man.)    I hope it doesn’t get overlooked on Netflix.  It’s the kind of movie I’d like to see more of.