Customer Reviews

My Architect [VHS]

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nathaniel Kahn's search for his late father, famed architect Louis Kahn, is a magnificent personal soul-searching for both legacy and family. The camera angles and perspectives extrapolate the insights that (Louis) Kahn brought to his works; the testimonies of friends and associates are emotive and passionate with love, respect, admiration, and joy. Nathaniel brings the eagerness and devotion as a loving adult for his father by highlighting the beauty, power, and simplicity of the buildings Louis designed--as well as revealing his personal quirks and flaws in a way that is wholesome and honest. More importantly, Nathaniel also embraces openly and with vulnerability the two half-sisters he hardly knew, looking to reunite the distant members of his family to resolve the issues his father could not face. The crowning moment of this film takes place in Bangla Desh when a key statesman breaks down in tears as he explains to Nathaniel why the state capitol building is a national monument of independence, democracy, and the future of the country, brought to them by Louis's genius.

While it won't win the Academy Award this year, up against the stellar CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS and THE FOG OF WAR, this film is still well worth seeing. Despite being a personal narrative that gives very little background about architecture, I left it feeling for the first time that architecture is truly an art in its own right.

It's the personal nature of the film that does it. You see how personally Louis I. Khan took his edificial creations-- and how indifferent he was to other creations, namely his son, the filmmaker, who barely knew him. As the son travels the world to see his father's buildings, he uncovers much about his father. Two secret families. A rough childhood. Influence of Judaism. Influence of Hinduism.

The amateurish parts of the film are saved, in my opinion, by the sincerity of the son's journey. He's not afraid to reveal embarrassing truths about his father, nor make himself look awkward (as in the hilarious sequence at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem). Could the film be more slick, more polished? Sure. But like his father's scarred concrete walls, he is not afraid to let the flaws show.

Are you an Architect? Are you married to one? Ever even spoken to one? If you're like most people, architects are mystical creative creatures, often men, always wearing black polonecks, living in gorgeous houses with even more gorgeous wives, designing stupendous buildings in the flash of an eye.

Well it's not like that really. Although this film doesn't really give us architects a much better image either. Nathaniel's film is, or was for him, a film to find out some of the truths about his father, Louis Kahn, a mystical figure who would appear infrequently in Nathaniel's life. So, for him, the making of this film was a voyage of discovery, about a man, his father, who just happened to be an architect. And, umm, how shall we put this: not married to Nate's mother.

To the rest of us architects however, Kahn is not just AN architect, he is THE architect. His buildings, sublime and perfect, are all too few: one of the best is rarely seen by the Western world, as it is in Bangladesh. The film's journey along the way shows us both the human side (all too human - one wife and two mistresses....), and the architectural side: his office, archive clips of Kahn on site, and wonderfully catty comments from the arch Arch himself, Phillip Johnson. Could he perhaps be... a little jealous? Thoughts of Ann Rand's the Fountainhead spring to mind here....

For a documentary, it's fascinating, and well deserves to win the Oscar this year. As an architectural text book however, it's a must see, a must buy the DVD, especially if you are an architect, or are married to one, or want to know what makes them tick. Students: go and see this film right now. Teachers: gather up those artistic few in the class, and give them all a pencil after the film. Wives and girlfriends: don't go near an architect unless you want to share.

Thanks Nathaniel, for sharing your father with all of us.

My Architect rates five stars for its haunting portrayal of architect Louis Kahn.

Louis Kahn, who died of a heart attack in New York's Penn Station in 1974, was an architect's architect-- he inspired many greats, including Phillip Johnson and Frank Gehry, but never attained the substantial commercial success that he craved. His major works were comparatively few, and include the Salk Institute, the Yale Art Museum, India's Institute of Management, and the capital of Bangladesh. Kahn's buildings distill form and light with a purity that many term mystic. Viewing Kahn's projects some 30 years after his death, it appears probable that Kahn's designs were ahead of their time. His commercial difficulties were also likely exacerbated by an intense, difficult temperament.

Kahn's professional life was only surpassed in complexity by his personal affairs. He fathered three children by three mothers, remaining married to his first wife while continuing to be involved with his other two families. If Kahn's designs were enigmatic, his personal affairs only compound his mystery. Two of the women who bore Kahn children, both architectural colleagues in his firm, are interviewed in the film. His children, reared separately, meet to examine their father, their various mothers, and their memories of his funeral. Both his wives and children speak of Kahn's magnetism and mystery-- one could be riveted by him, but the totality of the man was always hidden.

Nathaniel Kahn, Kahn's youngest child and only son, is the director and producer of My Architect. The film probes his father's professional and personal legacies with delicacy, wistfulness and regret. Nathaniel was eleven when Kahn died. This fine film is an homage to the accomplishments and failures of an enigmatic and eccentric genius, whose architecture inspired many and whose personal conduct combined love with selfishness and self-protection.

Highly recommended-- a strong five stars.

I went into this film as an architecture student, but this film was so wholly moving that it doesn't matter if you're an architect or not. I started crying about 15 minutes in, and didn't stop until the credits began to role. It's amazing to see this great man's life, to bring Louis Kahn down from his pedestal and realize how fully human and imperfect he was. This movie displays not only how his buildings affected the mindset of entire countries, but also how his personal life affected, often painfully so, the lives of those closest to him.
This movie really is a son's journey, and we see candidly the son's discovery of his father as he never knew him, as well as the son's struggle to piece together his own identity as it relates to his father's many different "lives".
This film has an almost spiritual depth, and leaves one with a refreshed appreciation for the beauty of art and life.

I bought this documentary on a whim because I enjoyed "Supersize Me" and "Farenheit 9/11." My sense now is that the genre of the documentary is entering a golden age, since the ones I've seen lately, including "My Architect," seem superior by far to mainstream dramas and comedies.

The basic premise here, easy to grasp, is the journey of the "illegitimate" son of American architect Louis Khan to discover who his shadowy father was by talking to people who knew him and by viewing and assessing his dad's work. This yields much humor and pathos. The people the younger Khan speaks to include A-list architects like I. M Pei and Phillip Johnson as well as ordinary Joes and are an interesting lot with compelling things to say about the Jewish design wizard.

Exploring Khan's buildings through his son's camera proves an even greater treat. Highlights include the sprawling sea-splashed Salk Institute on the California coast and the stunning light-suffused Capital building in Dacca, Bangladesh. What really endears us to the subject matter is that neither the weaknesses of the architect father nor his documentarian are swept away; rather they're discussed openly, and both come across as real--fragile flawed but immensely talented.

This film, a great balance of educational and emotional elements, is so worthwhile and enjoyable it's encouraged me to give the whole documentary genre a fresh look. I appreciate a discussion of architecture that wasn't dumbed down for the audience, such as when the film discussed the influence of ancient ruins, bombastic and timeless, on Khan's work. Bravo!

a great movie !! its a revelation-- compelling heartwarming heartbreaking-- informative- surprising--- it just gets better and better as we get to know the man the filmmaker is searching for -- from myth to all too human--- its the story of a great man and the price the families who loved him had to pay ---- the last scene says the most-- and the veritable miracle of his bangladesh capital building--- what it does for those lucky enough to use this amazing and gorgeous other worldly yet earthy strucure-- how it shapes lives and elevates them ! and the sheer beauty of it all--- and how this legacy can in the end compensate somehow for familial neglect-- for the benefit of all---this beauty this grand human effort has its costs !!!but the splendor this man has wrought for us-- and now thru the efforts of his son---given more exposure-- in this day and age of wars and money ruling the day--- its a welcome reminder of the things that last -that are of god and promote life ! of a different kind of hero and their works !it was quite literally for me a religious experience ! this film is in a class by itself and is trascendent and humbling !!! i sat thru it twice and was twice rewarded beyond all expectation !

This film works just beautifully, both as a personal narrative and as an exploration of Kahn's visionary architecture. I was utterly floored by the emotional impact of Nathaniel Kahn's journey into his father's past. As Kahn's appreciation of his father's professional accomplishments expands, so, too, does his sense of loss for the absentee father whom he knew only fleetingly, and who died when he was eleven. By the end of the film, when we see the reverence with which Kahn is viewed in India (where he is considered a sort of yogi or guru for his transformation of matter into "light and silence"), and in Bangladesh (where his enormous personal and financial sacrifice to build the governmental center made him a martyr in the eyes of many), we may come to view his problematic moral and family choices as simply the byproduct of a mind focused on universal themes. But this does not negate the intense pain he caused his several families, and it is instructive that someone so generous and talented was also the instrument of so much personal suffering to those who loved him most. The filmmaker explores all of this with unflinching honesty, enhanced by wonderful camera work and an evocative soundtrack; he has created a work of art entirely worthy of his famous father's legacy.

You don't have to be an architect to enjoy this movie. Nathaniel Kahn makes this a very personal journey as he ferrets out the details surrounding his father's mysterious death in Pennsylvania Station in 1974. Along the way you get treated to some wonderful insights into Kahn's work and separate lives by those who were closest to him. Louis Kahn was a powerful creative force and as such drew a lot of persons into his orbit, but at the same time Kahn had no idea how to manage his life, collapsing to the floor of the train station on his way back from India, and dying of a heart attack that left a deep void in the architectural world. But, it was also revealed at his funeral that Kahn had several close personal relationships in which he fathered three children from different women. Nathaniel is the youngest of these children and the only son. As such, it seems he assumed the burden to tell the story of his nomadic father. Nathaniel doesn't know much about architecture, leaving it to the architects he interviewed to relate the importance of Kahn's work to the viewer. Nathaniel is closer to home when he interviews family and friends of Kahn, touching deep emotional nerves, and giving this film its impact.

I walked into My Architect: A Son's Journey expecting a solid documentary in a year of many wonderful documentary releases. Little did I realize that I would be receiving much, much more than that.

My Architect is an amazingly compelling story of a son's journey to discover more about the father he never really knew. As the film progressed, and drew me more and more into its fascinating discoveries, it reminded me so much of a real life Citizen Kane - A portrait of a prominent figure head, painted as indestructible, but just as human and fallible as those he seems to tower above.

Interview after interview, director Nathaniel Kahn peered into tearful eyes as the interviewee explained how Louis Kahn, his father, had touched their lives. Kahn was portrayed not only as an great architect, but as a friend, father, rival, cuckold, and savior depending on who Nathaniel happened to be talking to at the moment.

How could a man of such influence and integrity in the workplace be so careless with the family aspect of his life? How did he manage to juggle three secret lives? What would he have done had he not died of a sudden heart attack in a train station? Where was he going? My Architect meditates on these questions in such a beautiful and poignant way, it is impossible to not be moved by the discoveries.

Not simply an exploration of family conflicts, My Architect is also a poetic study of art as a political medium, as a career, and most importantly as a deeply spiritual journey.