There is a wealth of data that illustrates the range of effects of a father’s absence on his daughters. They are likely to struggle with trust issues. Their self-confidence may diminish. They may struggle with feelings of abandonment, low self-esteem and rejection, or develop aggressive or otherwise antisocial behavior, or Willingness to take risks behaviors; they may become depressed, distant, or anxious. Fathers shape their daughters’ relational lives – the foundation and maintenance of meaningful relationships with family, friends, romantic partners, community – and inspire their creativity.
Angela Patton and Natalie Raes Daughtersthe festival darling and audience favorite: Winner of the US Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival – now available on Netflix – bypasses statistical analysis and instead strives for emotional impact.
I have two daughters of my own. For privacy reasons, I will call them by their nicknames: Brontosaurus, my eldest, and Elephant, my youngest. I love them more than anything else I have loved in my forty years on this earth.
For this reason, I have deliberately avoided Daughters in my distant coverage of Sundance, knowing full well that a film with that title, focusing on the theme of barriers between young girls and their incarcerated fathers, would likely break me in two; the idea of being separated from my girls is the stuff of my nightmares, as unlikely as it is that we will ever Be separated. (Sending them to summer camp and then back to school is hard enough.) I am not a statistic. Neither are Brownie and Elephant. Nevertheless, my reality has not dulled Daughters‘ effect on me.
A photo still from Daughters
Courtesy of Netflix
This is not a film about the numbers: how many girls in the US grow up without fathers; how many of those girls end up in bad relationships; how many of them become teenage mothers; how many are burdened with mental health problems; how many attempt suicide. To be honest, that wouldn’t be a film at all. allIf Patton and Rae had chosen these details as their subject, it would instead be an academic work, dry and without every human feeling.
Sensation is what Daughters is, of course, all about witnessing firsthand the stunning reconciliation of a group of girls and their fathers who are behind bars for reasons Patton and Rae refuse to elaborate on. (These reasons are neither our business nor relevant to the film’s thesis.) At the same time, it is an elegant condemnation of America’s love affair with crime and punishment, as evidenced by the various atrocities within the prison system.
Daughters declines to comment. The cruelty to inmates at the facility Patton and Rae chose as their setting speaks for itself. Being in prison is one thing. Being denied the luxury of touch during a scheduled visit is another. Daughters notes a recent shift in prison operations: away from face-to-face interaction between inmates and their families and towards a system of paid video calls – one modern injustice among countless others.
But the film not only exposes the humanitarian sins of these prisoners, it also exposes the corrupt soul of the American “lock them up” mentality. It also shows the punishment that these sins indirectly impose on the children of incarcerated parents, focusing particularly on the father-daughter bond.
With unshakable empathy, Daughters asks his audience a series of questions to encourage compassionate reflection on prison society: Is it not enough to lock these men up? Is it not enough that they give up their lives as reparation for breaking the law? Why should their Children further consequences? What laws have been She break?
A photo still from Daughters
Courtesy of Netflix
By Patton and Rae’s grace as filmmakers, Daughters plays with observational directness. This is not a Christian Children’s Fund PSA. This is an intimate, unvarnished look at what happens to girls who live every day knowing their father is unreachable behind 12 feet of ASTM-tested fencing – how their shine fades without him, who they become as they wait out the years until his release.
In some cases, redemption comes. In others, it is extended to truly breathtaking lengths of time. Aubrey, a prototypically precocious 5-year-old, makes optimistic rationalizations about how her father Keith’s 7-year prison sentence is not So bad; seven is a small number, which she demonstrates with hand gestures that represent the rotations of the sun. Seven rotations. Seven years. It’s doable. But God bless this sweet child: She can’t quite grasp the dark side of mathematics, that this comparatively short period of seven years means that he won’t be in her life for those seven years.
Other girls, like 10-year-old Santana and 11-year-old Ja’Ana, understand better the toll the years will take because they already Intake its toll. Santana is the de facto “father” of her family and helps raise her younger sister and brother. This is not how the world should be.
For a brief moment, starting with Daughters‘ halfway, it is not in this way. In the middle part of the film, the fathers undergo intensive therapy as part of the Date With Dad program, which is intended to help harden their relationships with their daughters, while Also They teach them skills that will help them return to the free world. (According to a title card before the credits, a whopping 95 percent of the fathers in the program stay out of prison after serving their sentences. If that’s not proof enough that the American penal system is a cumbersome, ineffective disgrace that perpetuates crimes rather than solving them, it never will be.)
It is not long before they have finished the program, put on their suits and ties and dress shoes, and enter a long hallway where they wait for their daughters, their angels, their saviors, who are simultaneously getting ready themselves, putting on bright, shiny dresses, styling their hair, carefully applying their makeup, and then the moment finally reaches its climax with their arrival at the prison and the quick, joyful run into the arms of their fathers, a tearful, exuberant rapture that leaves no witness untouched.
It’s impossible not to see the cruel parallels between this climax and the mundanities of raising children. Think of pick-up from daycare or kindergarten. Think of your child rushing to hug you, screeching your name like a delighted battle cry, a daily routine for me as I pick up my two little ones at the end of the day. Daughters‘ was for me to relive that routine and feel a flood of gratitude that I experience every weekday, coupled with a wave of sadness for the Patton and Rae contestants who only get to experience it now, in this one moment, and then have to hold on to it for years to come until they get out, assuming they Doand return to their families.
A photo still from Daughters
Courtesy of Netflix
I am not a statistician. I do not enter the data playgrounds outside my purview as a film critic, but I still cannot tell you who Daughters‘ most likely target audience. I can only say that it should be “everyone with a Netflix account”. But it particularly should also include fathers of daughters, regardless of their origin, status, circumstances or the likelihood of ending up in prison themselves one day.
Daughters fits into a moment in the long American history of incarcerating black men, something I know enough about to suspect that the sentences these men receive are blatantly unjust. The gross injustice of their situation, however, provides a valuable catharsis for those of us privileged and fortunate enough to enjoy our American freedoms and, most importantly, to enjoy the lives of our daughters. From the beginning of the Daddy Daughter Dance to its heartbreaking end, these men are not prisoners. They are Fathers They are as free as anyone can be in prison, because they are with their girls, and their girls are allowed Daughters again.
The tragedy of reunification Daughters with such tenderness is a reminder to fathers: cherish your daughters. As you watch the second half of Patton and Rae’s work through sobs and choked breath, remember how much they need you. Remember how much you need them.
