His Three Daughters 

Directed and written by Azazel Jacobs ◆ Produced by High Frequency Entertainment ◆ Distributed by Netflix

Death is an inevitability, a thought that we have to live with, and fear of death is a universal human condition. There is no bargaining with death and there is no conversation. The powerlessness that accompanies this universal fear and dread is palpable and visceral. What can we hold onto as we face our mortality? Azazel Jacobs’ new film, His Three Daughters (2024), explores what happens to a family facing the death of their father.

Perhaps alluding to Anton Chekhov’s play Three Sisters (1900), the story of Jacobs’ film centers on three sisters—Katie (Carrie Coon), Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) who come together as their father, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), is dying. The doctors can’t do much for him anymore, and he has been moved from the hospital to his apartment for the final days of hospice care. Except for a few exterior scenes, the entire film takes place in the apartment, and the claustrophobia is palpable. The sisters cannot escape from one another. They are bound not only because of the father but because of the visceral experience of an impending death. 

Rachel has been living with and caring for Vincent for many years. Although she just appears to be a bum and a pothead, it’s clear that her habits are coping mechanisms for the situation she finds herself in. Katie lives nearby but has never offered help in caring for her father, and Christina lives far away from New York.

There is an immediate tension between the sisters. Katie wants to wield her own power not only over Rachel but also over the space they inhabit. She complains that there is nothing in the refrigerator other than apples, and accuses Rachel of neglecting their father, only to later learn that Vincent was unable to eat anything other than apples.

It’s clear Katie deems her own life far more important than that of either of her sisters. In addition, she assumes the role of perfection while everyone else’s flaws are on full display. Her motto may as well be “I am always right.” It’s not hard to see that this attitude will only create division, anger, and possibly even hatred. Katie masks her fears by simply avoiding responsibility and feigning sisterly wisdom.

Rachel is avoidant, too, but for different reasons. She spends most of her days smoking marijuana and betting on football games. According to her, this is how she and Vincent spent most of their days together. She rarely interacts with either Katie or Christina, although it is clear that most of the built-up tension is between her and Katie. Rachel repeatedly retreats to her room.

More than anything, Christina wants to be strong. She seemingly has her life in order—a husband and a young daughter whom she dotes on. Despite this orderly demeanor, she is clearly frazzled. Her voice is a series of excruciatingly polite notes signifying nothing. Often, she is the buffer between Katie and Rachel and tries to mediate a reconciliation between them, but ends up sounding as superficial as a Hallmark card. This approach doesn’t work for an overly cynical Rachel or a coldly anxious Katie. 

In the midst of this sisterly drama, Jacobs introduces the banality and absurdity of an everyday existence. Katie is attempting to write an obituary for Vincent, but all she can come up with are simple platitudes in which everyone is remembered as “beloved.” 

Since Vincent’s final days are spent in hospice care, nurses visit the apartment every day. One, named Angel, has clearly done this before, but his attempts at compassion and empathy come off as purely clinical. He has said the same exact words to someone else, in the same rooms, surrounded by the same objects. Underneath this planned dying is the superficial empathy of professionals burdened with bureaucratic paperwork. Death is inevitable, and so is the bureaucracy of modern American existence. 

There are many moments in the film that reveal the triteness and superficiality of the daily encounters around Vincent’s deathbed. The nurse assigned to their case is just as banal as Angel. In one instance, as the nurse leaves the apartment, Katie attempts to be polite and grateful, but her cold demeanor reveals inauthenticity. As the nurse turns to leave, Katie begins to break down emotionally. She hopes her vulnerability will be recognized and that the nurse will offer a kind and compassionate word, or even a caring embrace. Instead, she’s brushed off by the nurse, who has other things to do, and cannot concern herself with Katie’s interior struggle. Katie is left in a position of powerlessness, not only over the nurse’s lack of sympathy but also over death itself. 

The sisters have nothing to hold onto. None, it appears, have any faith or any kind of relationship to God. Christina wants to have a perfectly balanced life in a form of meditation and yoga but all of these are poor attempts at finding harmony and meaning in an uncaring universe. Katie suggests there is no such meaning to be found, while for Rachel, life is mostly a series of unpleasant tasks to complete until she can get back to smoking
her next joint. 

Joy is not something known by any of the sisters. Christina gets closest to this foreign emotion but her so-called spirituality is short-lived and superficial. The culture the sisters live in offers no hope, and certainly no faith. And yet, it would be too easy and simplistic to dismiss and label His Three Daughters as a nihilistic film. Certainly, the claustrophobia of the apartment and the building itself contributes to a feeling of emptiness. But one man’s perceived metropolitan emptiness is another’s beauty in the crowded city. The noise means life. 

As the sisters anticipate the death of their father, so does the audience. Judging by the circumstances, Vincent is almost comatose, yet the sisters look for any signs of life. In one moment, they all seem to hear their father’s request: to bring him into the living room. Rather surprisingly, Vincent begins to take off all the needles that are connecting his frail body to the myriad of hospital monitors and drips. Suddenly, he is full of life. His daughters are astounded and elated. Vincent has something on his mind that he wants to convey to his daughters, and in that moment, their demeanor changes entirely. They become little girls eager to hear their father tell them a story.

Vincent delivers a beautiful speech. He offers his regret, things he should have done better, love he should have shown in a stronger way. He tells a story about a woman he once knew named Bliss. She was very briefly in his life, but according to Vincent, she changed the way he perceived the world and other people. Bliss was strongly and genuinely curious about life, and Vincent wishes he could emulate her attitude.

As Vincent tells his story, tethered to the equipment of death, his sudden burst of vitality begins to fade into lifelessness. It is a surprising and sad moment in the film, as his body gives out as his mind and soul wished to do more. Yet, somehow, by moving Vincent into the living room so that he could deliver his dying words, the three sisters had to work together. In that moment, regardless of Vincent’s intended message to them, they had to transcend their own inadequacies and petty dramas in order to help their father. His sick body was a vehicle of life for the sisters.

In an earlier scene, Christina attempts to piece together a memory she had with her father that did not involve either Katie or Rachel. They often watched movies together, and on one of those occasions, there was a death scene in the film. Commenting on the scene, Vincent laughed and said, “The only way to communicate how death truly feels is through absence. Everything else is fantasy.” 

None of what the sisters face is a question of ethics or aesthetics, but of metaphysics. Although fear of death is a universal condition, the bigger question surrounding death is whether we have the courage to be? 

In his book, The Doctor and the Soul (1952), psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl observes that in death, “finiteness must itself constitute something that gives meaning to human existence–not something that robs it of meaning.” For Frankl, the essential element of life is responsibility tied to our encounters with other people. And so, he asks, “If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever… temporality, is therefore not only an essential characteristic of human life, but also a real factor in its meaningfulness.”

Although His Three Daughters does not delving into these questions philosophically nor is it a particularly joyful film, it does present the audience with another important element in life–our need for closure. This particularly American concept can be a desert mirage, for life truly does not offer such exit out of sorrow. To be sure, the sisters were changed by their encounter with death but any possibility of being for them that comes after will be solely based on their individual responsibility. The next act for the three sisters will be the act of life.