Jarmusch : Father, Mother, Sister, Brother

 

It’s no coincidence that all three pairs of siblings get along and all their parents primarily lived in self created worlds. The kids needed each other to validate a life experience that no one else can understand. 

 Watching the film is frustrating because sparsely revealed backstories promise to be so fascinating. The film has a good aftertaste, though, as parents’ homes move from frumpy casual to airtight perfection to totally stripped and bare - the film ending with the sweet sorrow of a stuffed storage locker in Paris. 

 The precious moments of life are sufficient - no elaborate fantasy or high pressure drama is required. No one in this film is ever bored- so neither is the curious viewer.

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It’s more like a collage than an anthology of independent stories.

The intense,  wildly different father and mother of parts one and two allow the absence of parents in part three to deliver a powerful wave of emotional loss that has totaled the bereaved children - possibly for their entire lives.  One or both are druggies. 

The declining competency/normality of the children progresses from each story to the next.  The first adult child we meet is the only one who is married with children of her own.   

The film works much better in memory than in watching it.

History of Sound

 

This is one of those films, like “Charade”, where you really don’t know what happened until the end when you realize that the title of the film really does say it all. “The History of Sound” is the story of how a musically gifted child left the backwoods of Kentucky and eventually discovered his vocation as an ethno-musicologist.

The film is promoted as a period gay romance, and several reviewers on Mubi were disappointed with the predictably tragic denouement. I nearly quit viewing when the story moved to Rome. But as it turns out, more of the screen time is about becoming a professional scholar.  Not really an appropriate theme for the cinematic arts of drama, motion, and color - far more intellectual than sensual - but it’s kinda cool to have the climax of a two hour film be a few well spoken lines written in the introduction of an academic monograph. 

 Once you appreciate that, all of the pieces fit together so nicely: from the opening monolog spoken above a forest stream … to dad singing on the back porch…to the meeting of like minds in a Boston bar…to the invitation to join a Summer recording project….to etc etc. Yes, there is some hot steamy sex with both genders, but the essential relationship is that of minds not bodies. If Lionel had not met David, he likely would have spent his life picking out tunes in a Kentucky cabin. The truth of a folk song seemed to interest him a whole lot more than standing in front of an audience. 

 An important film personally for me - and perhaps for others who are forever hooked by the aesthetic enthusiasms of their parent(s). No other pleasure is greater or deeper.

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 BTW, some nice scenes with the young Ladyship. She was so cute, rich, and appealing, I really wanted Lionel to stay with her and live in a palatial manor, but like Odysseus with Calypso, our hero’s destiny lay elsewhere. He absolutely had to go back home - one way or another.

BTW II - seems doubtful that Lionel ever identified as homosexual.  In a discussion with David, he shares none of the oppression that David feels, and David envies him for that.  Sexual urges just spontaneously happen  - and after he leaves the Ladyship, we don’t see him having any more for the rest of his life.  He writes that song is a way of coping with the “messiness” of life - and apparently he’d rather sing than make any more messes.

BTW III - David acknowledges that he will say whatever is needed to get what he wants - so he is definitely an unreliable narrator concerning his life story.  He even misleads Lionel by saying that his song recording project was sanctioned by the college where he teaches. Nothing he says can be believed.   Perhaps that’s why Lionel doesn’t try harder to stay with him instead of leaving for Europe.  The film is unclear about that.