Golden Lion for Jim Jarmusch: An old master wins in Venice with an old-fashioned film

Even director Jim Jarmusch was surprised when his "little film" unexpectedly won the top prize: The 82nd Venice International Film Festival concluded on Saturday evening with the Golden Lion being awarded to "Father Mother Sister Brother." The critics' reviews also didn't suggest this choice—quite the opposite.

A victory was expected for "The Voice of Hind Rajab," which received more than 20 minutes of standing ovations at its premiere and later the Jury Grand Prix. Based on a true story, Kaouther Ben Hania's drama emotionally portrays the dramatically failed rescue attempt of a girl trapped in a car in Gaza. It also puts Israel in the dock in a one-sided and context-free manner, just as the thousands of "pro-Palestine" demonstrators did when they noisily marched across the Lido on the first weekend of the festival.

Kathryn Bigelow's breathless nuclear missile thriller "A House of Dynamite" also received excellent critical acclaim – and would have been an unpleasantly present winner. Park Chan-wook also had his chances with his capitalism farce "No Other Choice," which South Korea is submitting to the Oscar race. Both were acclaimed, but both came away empty-handed.

Now, it's usually the case that juries' decisions and journalists' favorites are two different things. The jury members, led this year by the astute director Alexander Payne ("Nebraska"), who, while a definite cinephile, isn't particularly fond of contemporary cinema, don't align themselves with media standards. That's perfectly fine; such tensions fuel the discourse about cinema; they keep it alive in the first place.

But the decision to honor Jarmusch, a master who had never before been honored at the Lido, for the second year in a row is puzzling. In 2024, Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar won with his aesthetically stylish, yet irritatingly superficial euthanasia drama "The Room Next Door." Now Jarmusch follows with "Father Mother Sister Brother," an episodic meditation on the dysfunctionality of familial relationships stuck in their incomprehension.

An ensemble of stars struggles in vain against the dull script: In the first story, a brother and sister (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) travel to visit their supposedly down-and-out father (Tom Waits). They sit at the table, just as silent and lost as Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett later do with Charlotte Rampling. And at the end, a pair of twins (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) visit their deceased parents' Paris apartment, which is as empty as the entire film.

This kind of unspectacular laconicism, which consistently generates laughs, is a Jarmusch trademark. It may have worked in the past, those long, awkward pauses, those characters you feel a bit embarrassed for and a bit of sympathy for. But now his family constellation seems unbearable in its hollow, nostalgic, sleepy-eyedness.

At the film's press conference, Jarmusch was asked about his stance on the co-producing streaming service Mubi. The film has been criticized for its ties to an Israeli military startup. The indie icon then complained that corporate money is inherently dirty. Of course, he took it anyway—what else could he do? The film's thought processes are similarly straightforward.

"How old is your son?" - "13" - "Hmm, nice." The dialogue would be too banal for an AI. And the camera angles are as static as a sitcom. Interspersed are running gags, like the question of whether it's okay to toast with water. And in every episode, skateboarders appear in slow motion, "suddenly everywhere now," as one character notes. You wonder where Jarmusch has been for the last thirty years.

"Father Mother Sister Brother" is boomer cinema at its worst. And, unfortunately, further confirmation of Quentin Tarantino's verdict that directors' late works are rarely worth anything. Similar to Almodóvar last year, one gets the feeling that the jury in Venice is throwing an award at someone in their old age because they simply missed the honoree's heyday.

21 films were in competition, and one could certainly have found something more contemporary among them. However, there was some positive news for young filmmakers and for Switzerland that evening: Zurich native Luna Wedler received the Marcello Mastroianni Award, the honor for best acting talent.