Movie Description
Fast-motion footage of clouds passing and daylight shifting over architect Louis I. Kahn's most famous buildings shows the true beauty of his monumental work. Designer of the Salk Institute, the Exeter Library, the Kimbell Art Museum, and the Capital Complex of Bangladesh, Kahn dedicated his life to his work, and kept his personal life private. Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn should know, as he is the artist's illegitimate son, who was 11 years old at the time his father died. Nathaniel made the movie to get to know his father better, and to come to terms with the shocking way that he died--of a heart attack, all alone, in the men's room in New York City's Penn Station. Interviews with such impressive architects as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Robert A. M. Stern give testament to the impact that Kahn made with his work. And touching but tense interviews with Kahn's mistresses--one of whom is the director's mother--shed light on the architect's misgivings in his family life. Music by Neil Young adds poignancy to Nathaniel's story of the famous father he barely knew, and archival footage of Kahn walking through the streets of Philadelphia, working in his office, or teaching graduate classes; brings the architect's legend to life.
| Credits | | Producer: | Susan Rose Behr |
Notes
IN THEATRES: NOVEMBER 12, 2003 (NY)
Editorial Reviews
"...The architect of his own revealing work of art, Nathaniel Kahn has built something affecting he can call his own..."
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum (11/21/2003)
"[P]art of a wave of first-person, quasi-therapeutic odysseys using film as an instrument of generational or factional reconciliation."
Film Comment - Film Comment Staff (01/01/2004)
"[C]ompelling....Fascinating....Louis was something of a sacred monster, and the film honors his complexities and contradictions."
Movieline's Hollywood Life - Stephen Farber (02/01/2004)
"[A]ffecting....It is a film that's as much about the emotional connections between children and parents as it is about an architect even his peers are in awe of."
USA Today - Kenneth Turan (01/23/2004)
"[T]he architectural celebrities are good value, eschewing reverence in favour of an honesty as brutal as the raw concrete that was one of Kahn's favoured materials."
Sight and Sound - Vicky Wilson (09/01/2004)
"Kahn's unswerving determination to reconcile himself with the departure of his father is genuinely touching."
Uncut - David Stubbs (09/01/2004)
"We get a sense of Kahn's greatness and also his sadness..."
Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert (02/11/2005)
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