Those who have seen the Zürcher twins’ other works, The Strange Little Cat and The Girl and the Spider, may have felt a tension building across the two titles. In both of those works, cramped living spaces lead to shoulder-bumping and repeated confrontations among the respective films’ families — where these near-silent prods fizzle into a sort of austere humor in Cat, a fuller passive-aggression boils in Spider. Communication in those worlds only makes things worse. And while one might expect a smaller stage to induce more drama, Spider offers two apartments to Cat’s single dwelling, giving its characters the time to themselves to brood and reflect and increase the tension. The Sparrow in the Chimney, their third in this domestic trilogy, is the inevitable explosion.
Here is also a tale of domestic warfare in the Zürchers’ most grandiose setting: an entire house, complete with land, a lake, and a faraway cabin. While details about the family’s history of spite and violence are teased as more guests arrive, Karen (Maren Eggert), something of a matriarch, does immediately reveal that all is not well in the house. She, along with her son Leon (Ilja Bultmann), fight openly as they prepare for the extended family to arrive for her husband Markus’ (Andreas Döhler) birthday party the following day. Leon is quite responsible for his young age, evinced by his cooking lunch for everyone, but the rare mistake is noted and criticized by the harsh Karen, whose sister, Jule (Britta Hammelstein), is quick to notice, serving Karen a disappointed glance. There’s also Jule’s husband, Jurek (Milian Zerzawy), their young daughter Edda (Luana Greco), and their new infant child that Karen stares at with a mixture of jealousy and disgust (or possibly something wildly different depending on one’s reaction to the Zürchers’ Kuleshov Effect). Then there’s Karen’s middle child Johanna (Lea Zoë Voss), born with a rare joint disease and a penchant for telling her mother that she hates her and wishes her dead; and there’s the last to arrive, the eldest daughter Christina (Paula Schindler), who had presumably run away to escape all this but has returned anyway. Finally, there’s Liv (Luise Heyer), who is not a part of the family but is a part of the drama.
This makes for quite the full house. At first, it’s difficult to keep up with each of the characters; Ramon Zürcher’s screenplay refuses to set up situations where every new character can explicitly announce their relationships with one another. Every conversation feels like a rehashing of an old fight or a continuation of a discussion that was shelved weeks ago. This builds a tense, mysterious atmosphere such that bizarre questions and insults — Why did Karen and Jule’s father kill himself? Why did Karen call Johanna “disabled?” — linger, only for the film to deliver an emotional barrage of revelations in the fiery third act.
Despite all these kinetic characters, cinematographer Alex Hasskerl keeps the camera still and focuses deep. By placing the camera toward a door or a hallway, this small cadre of emotional warriors can come, go, interrupt a conversation, or loom awkwardly in the background. Shallow focus is reserved only for intimate moments or emotional duels. This clever framing and blocking makes the house always feel busy, no matter how much peaceful golden-hour light refracts into the floorboards and onto the white walls and pale faces. And, though they may be busy, many members of this family are lost in their own heads as they obsess over the past or peer into a room to witness an affair. The strength of their pondering perhaps even brings new characters into existence: several times, Karen or Jule wistfully look into middle-distance, then a hard cut reveals new characters traveling, until another hard cut to the daydreaming sister cuts off that narrative. In normal film language, this would imply that the traveling characters are a flashback or that Karen is merely thinking about them; in this film, those characters then walk through the front door. It’s a jarring effect, and one that signals that the film will move beyond mere realism.
As the pieces of family history come together, The Sparrow in the Chimney slowly settles into Gothic storytelling. This house is the house Karen and Jule grew up in, and it’s haunted by a cycle of infidelity, death, and fire that played out once during the previous generation and is fated to play out again in this one. With each character either bickering or living in their own world, nobody pays attention to a dejected Leon whose unattended actions lead to one of the most casually disturbing scenes in recent film history. After that, the film abandons its static camera along with any semblance of realism. To portray the collapse of this domestic world, the Zürchers borrow the imagery and techniques of that other stress-fest about the chaos of hosting a home — 2017’s mother! — as well as that other film about the consequences of being a dick to your housemates — 2023’s Afire. Those final sequences cap a trilogy about animals, family, violence, and home life, but they go far beyond the polite drama expected from the naturalistic arthouse school. It’s hard to imagine a better ending to the Zürchers’ trilogy, as they’ve realized a credo that more commercial filmmakers have always known: subtlety is no match for an explosion.
Published as part of Locarno Film Festival 2024 — Dispatch 1.
