by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
I did theater in high school. It’s as close to a live action, two-dimensional medium as you can get. You’re on the stage and the audience is in the seats watching. Yes, there’s an upstage and a downstage but it’s a confined space. You can only move so far and cannot escape the spotlight on you and your emotions. The sisters in His Three Daughters cannot escape their own prison either.
As their ill father nears his passing, Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) reunite to take care of him. Old tensions arise, memories are shared, and the sisters come together to take care of him. There really is not much of a plot other than that. This movie is more of an experience. You get to see everything come to the surface between these three. Cramped into their childhood home, there is no direction for them to go except inward.
Netflix movies tend to have this very artificial feel to them. Sometimes it has to do with an insane amount of CGI or just vague looking sets that could be anywhere. It takes away any real sense of setting to the movie. But staying in this apartment for the most part gives the movie a very homey feeling. The place feels rich with family and memories, like going home to your folks for Thanksgiving.
Going home to that family can be complicated too. But there is something so simple about it, and you fit right in. Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne are like an old puzzle that just falls together. Coon has the stressed out mother down to a T. Olsen channels her inner Instagram mother who has more to her than you thought. Lyonne does the between jobs slacker millennial. There is love beneath every conversation and little passive-aggressive jab. The feel of history and all the conversations they have about where they are in life just adds to their dynamic and chemistry. They hold themselves together in the face of this tremendous loss.
The last thing that this movie has going for it is how it portrays the inevitably and slow pain of losing a parent. It’s not exactly a tragedy, as the man’s time has come, but it’s not something the kids are prepared for either. Even though Katie, Christina, and Rachel have all grown, it’s still hard to come to terms with losing their father. And the strain of trying to let his life end properly doesn’t make their life or their relationships with each other even simpler. But staying and leaning on each other is what gets them through it. They get each other through these trials.
Rating: Loved It
His Three Daughters is currently streaming on Netflix
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