FAMILY MATTERS

A crop of fall movies search proverbial—and literal— attics to explore what makes a family unit tick

- BY STEPHANIE ZACHAREK

ONE OF THE MOST GRIMLY FUNNY POEMS OF the past century is Philip Larkin's “This Be the Verse,” with its opening salvo about how our parents invariably mess us up.

Larkin used a saltier word for “mess,” but you get the idea. Parents make us who we are, and if we have siblings, our parents’ traits and legacies filter through the whole gang in various combinations. As Larkin wrote, “They fill you with the faults they had/ and add some extra, just for you.”

All humans come from parents, people whose genetic stamp we carry whether we like it or not. And, perhaps excluding cases where those same people did not raise us, their faults inform us if not, as Larkin claimed, fill us. In the world of film, there have probably been as many movies about families as there are love stories. We're obsessed with family stories for good reason, though not all of them need to be loaded with trauma. This fall movie season, you might say we're exploring the subtler angles of how individual family members connect, or don't. A documentary in which a now famous son reflects on the lives of his famous parents; a triptych exploring slightly wacky parent-child relationships, from a filmmaker who has specialized in vibrant off-kilter comedies since the 1980s; and, from a leading Danish-Norwegian filmmaker, a delicate but potent picture that looks at the damage an absentee parent can wreak—though reconnection and reconciliation are always possible, even if only in baby steps. Maybe familial ties, in a world that most days seems to have gone horribly wrong, where each whipsaw news cycle brings another story about humans' inflicting cruelty on one another, are more important than ever. These films explore those bonds without ever resorting to bromides or mawkishness. Every family is flawed, unpredictable, aggravating in its own way—and still, they're often the thing that gets us through.