It takes Jim Jarmusch a lot of effort to make things look effortless
American cinema legend Jim Jarmusch reunites with Cate Blanchett and Tom Waits for his latest film, the three-part Father Mother Sister Brother.
With his shock of white hair and dark sunglasses Jim Jarmusch is among the coolest – and most instantly recognisable – filmmakers. When last year he won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, for Father Mother Sister Brother, he was clearly taken aback, exclaiming “Oh shit!” when he hit the podium.
It was the most significant prize of the 73-year-old’s long career – even if he was awarded a Sundance Special Jury Prize and Cannes Camera d’Or for his seminal breakthrough, 1985’s Stranger Than Paradise, which is credited for having instigated the American independent film movement. In 2005 he was awarded the Cannes Grand Prix for Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray and he was also widely nominated in 2013 (including in the Adelaide Film Festival’s international category) for his vampire romance Only Lovers Left Alive starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston.
Jarmusch of course had worked with Cate Blanchett on 2003’s Coffee and Cigarettes and the Australian actress again appears in the second segment of Father Mother Sister Brother, as the daughter of a famous Dublin-based author, played by Charlotte Rampling, and the conservative sister of a wild Vicky Krieps, as Rampling hosts a tea party.
“I think Jim portrays so calmly, peacefully and amazingly, the everyday conversation between people with tea, cigarettes and coffee in a simple but also astonishing way,” Blanchett said in Venice. “The last time we worked together I smoked a lot of cigarettes, so I was glad not to smoke in this one!”
Jarmusch tells InReview that he had initially wanted Blanchett to play the mischievous sister, and Krieps the nerdy one. “But Cate said, ‘Oh, can I be the nerdy one? Because I’m always the mysterious one.’
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“Vicky said she’d love to be the mischievous one, so I flipped them. Cate is an amazing actor and person, as are Vicky and Charlotte, who is one of my favourites. I don’t really rehearse, I talk with the actors separately and my greatest pleasure was having dinners with the three of them. But it was really just a ploy so I could be with them, you know? What incredible creatures they all are.”
This story comes second in the film following a New Jersey-set segment, where an eccentric father (Tom Waits) hosts a visit for his weary children (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik), while the third is in Paris, with twin siblings (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) paying a final visit to their late parents’ home. The stories do not overlap, but are connected by the idea of family members struggling to connect with each other.
“I like to write for actors and I started thinking, it’d be cool if Tom Waits was Adam Driver’s father,” Jarmusch explains. “And then I’m a Jeopardy! fan and Maya Bialik was my favourite host, so I thought she’d be great as Adam’s sister. While I was thinking about that, the other stories started taking root somehow. I also love the number three, so I wanted to construct a triptych that is one film. It’s like a piece of music with three movements.
“To me, the peak of the movie is when the twins embrace in their parents’ bedroom. But if you saw that chapter without the others, I would be mortified, because I worked so hard to have it accumulate, with a lot of detail. It takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless in cinema. It’s a lot harder to do these details than have 20 zombies come out of the grave,” he notes, referring to his 2019 zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die starring Driver, Swinton, Murray and Waits.
As for bringing Waits, now 76, back to acting, he didn’t take much convincing. “He’s like my brother,” says Jarmusch of the actor-musician who had starred in his films Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law and Mystery Train, another triptych.
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“The only issue was after the first day of shooting when Adam and Mayim were very focused. They are precise actors, while Tom needs a longer leash. Tom said, ‘You hired these two professional killers. What do I do man?’ I was like, we do our thing. Tom was a bit intimidated by their precision, but that helped with the characters, because they’re kind of uptight and square. They’re like, preppies, yuppies and are not bohemian, but the father is, so that helped the scenes work out well.”
Jarmusch says his own family is unconventional, though the film is not consciously personal. He had left his Ohio family home at 17, studied in Chicago and then New York, where he also worked as a musician, something he continues to do. Besides Waits, musicians including John Lurie have figured in his films, while his 2016 film Gimme Danger focused on the punk band The Stooges and his friend Iggy Pop.
Jarmusch has long been in a relationship with filmmaker and actress Sara Driver, and at one point mentions his daughter being protective of him as they walked along a New York street.
“I’m an active father in a female environment, which I like very much,” Jarmusch says. “I like female energy; I’ve learned more from females in my life. I wish we could have matriarchal societies. I wish Tilda Swinton could be queen of planet Earth, and whatever she says, I’m going to do that.”
Jarmusch is currently writing a road movie set in France where he briefly lived in his youth and where he filmed a segment of 1991’s Night on Earth. In recent French interviews for the release of his new film, which is partially a French production, he acknowledged his intention to apply for French citizenship, as filmmaking in the US has become too restrictive. In our interview he concedes that he must speed up his way of working.
“Time passes quickly. It seems to be speeding up, you know? I’m lucky, I’m in good health. I’m vegan and I take care of myself. I do Tai Chi; I try to keep a balance. I just want to keep working. I want to keep doing stuff. I also want to live a groovy life.”
Father Mother Sister Brother is in Australian cinemas from April 2
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