Jim Jarmusch has made anthology films before: Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003). In fact, he could claim to be the pre-eminent specialist in this now very unfashionable movie form. But with his new one, a deeply pleasing and gently quietist triptych on the subject of family, he is giving us something new and personal.
It’s the sense of mortality and the gathering cloud of darkness over our heads as we enter middle age, a perpetual nagging worry about the health and happiness of our elderly parents, with the guilt and sadness of not going to see them, or seeing them only rarely, and the related feeling of closeness – or perhaps the opposite – with your siblings for whom these parents are the number one topic of conversation. Then there’s the feeling of relief mixed with dissatisfaction and unease on the long car journey home.
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