My Architect: A Son's Journey
Cast
Edmund Bacon .... Himself
Edwina Pattison Daniels .... Aunt Eddie
B.V. Doshi .... Himself
Frank O. Gehry .... Himself
Philip Johnson .... Himself
Directed by
Nathaniel Kahn
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
Has Not Seen Movie
Rater #2
5/10. Some documentaries have an interesting topic and create an altogether
mesmerizing movie out of it. Others have a very interesting topic but
somewhat fizzle out in the middle of it. Still others don't have an
interesting topic and fizzle out throughout the whole movie. The last
is the case of My Architect: A Son's Journey, a documentary that
could have been a moving, loving tribute to Philadelphian architect
Louis Kahn. Instead, it's a distant, shallow, and almost mean-
spirited look at Kahn's life and buildings, coldly narrated by his
son Nathaniel.
Kahn himself is an interesting character-he had not just one but
three families. Although after listening to his son talk to us for
two hours, it's not hard to understand why he would want to spend as
much away from that son as possible. Nathaniel's droll feature
narration is not only monotonous and dull, but it seems scripted-
almost like someone is telling him how to feel about his father. If
he truly did care about his father, then I think he would at least
have the dignity of trying to at least act like he cared about his
father. It's hard to listen to a man talk about how much he loved his
father for two hours when it's obviously not true? Why would
Nathaniel even narrate it himself? Instead of giving this BS
commentary on his life, why not get someone to read a more impersonal
commentary whose voice doesn't start to grate on you soon after the
movie begins?
On the other hand, Kahn designed and built some very interesting
looking buildings. Many of them were not practical, but they were
nice to look at. If only I would have been able to see more of them;
the fullscreen presentation really brought down the impact of viewing
the buildings. Something that bugged me is that there was nothing
about how Kahn got his ideas for his buildings, the ideas behind
them. Did he suddenly have ideas pop up into his head, or did he have
long, drawn out processes? We never find out. If the members of the
Kahn family never found out, I would be OK with that, as long as they
didn't keep us wondering about it.
But not only was Nathaniel's narration hard to take, but the film
itself isn't very interesting. In fact, some parts are just plain
boring. It seems padded to the two hour runtime, yet much of the
material was unnecessary, such as the reunion between the three Kahn
kids. Sure, it's nice they got to know each other, but necessary? I
think not. My Architect was nominated for an Oscar for best
documentary. It lost out to The Fog of War. It's easy to see why it
lost, too.
Not Rated.
Running time: 116 minutes
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