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My Architect [2003] [DVD]

DVD ~ Nathanial Khan

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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	85% buy the item featured on this page: My Architect [2003] [DVD] 3.7 out of 5 stars (6) �6.98
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Product details

Directors: Nathanial Khan
Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
Language English
Subtitles: English
Region: All Regions
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 1
Classification: PG
Studio: Tartan Video
DVD Release Date: 21 Mar 2005
Run Time: 113 minutes

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

ASIN: B0006GVJLC
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 15,313 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

One nonfiction film that truly creates a narrative journey, My Architect is filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's engrossing search for his father. Louis Kahn, one of the most celebrated architects of the 20th century, died in 1974 and left behind a highly compartmentalized life, including two children born out of wedlock to two mistresses. Nathaniel interviews the members of this somewhat puzzled family, but his deepest experiences are visits to the buildings that his father made (such as the grand Salk Institute in La Jolla, California), culminating in an emotional trip to Bangladesh. Here, Louis Kahn designed a massive government complex, a soaring achievement (and fascinating paradox--a Muslim capital designed by a Jewish man). This film asks: where does an artist truly live? In his life, or in the work he leaves behind? Nathaniel Kahn takes an amazingly even-tempered approach to this, given his personal stake in the story, and the result is a uniquely stirring movie. --Robert Horton

Synopsis

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.

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Documentary - Flawed Extras, 22 Jun 2005

By A Customer

Wonderful exploration of the life and work of the great American architect Louis Kahn, directed by the son he never openly acknowledged. Of the extras, the Q&A with Nathaniel Kahn is priceless, and includes this memorable quote from his father: "A good idea that doesn't happen is no idea at all."

Unfortunately, getting Tom Dawson (who he?) to conduct the 'exclusive UK interview' with Nathaniel Kahn wasn't a good idea. Kahn is engaging and interesting, while, off-camera, Dawson attempts the world record for saying 'yeah', 'yes!', and 'right' at inopportune moments. As result, sadly, the interview is virtually unwatchable.

But the film is reason enough to buy this DVD.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Architecture, life and love, 30 Mar 2005

By A Customer

This journey to the heart of what it means to be human is also a poignant exploration of the life and loves of a great architect. Louis Kahn has reached almost mythical status as the architect of some of the most beautiful buildings in the world. He died mysteriously, leaving behind massive debts and three children who hardly knew him. This film is about his son's quest to piece together his father's legacy - to place his father, and therefore himself in the world. The architecture is incidental, but so sublime, that it becomes the central driver in exploring the ultimate question of 'who am I?'.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SON DISCOVERS FATHER THROUGH HIS ARCHITECTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS, 8 Aug 2006

By	F. Sweet (Midwestern USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Director Nathaniel Kahn had been the illegitimate son of Louis I. Kahn perhaps the world's most unique architect. Nathanial was the product if Louis' second of two sequential extramarital liaisons that he maintained during his life. Louis had a daughter with his wife, Esther, with whom he lived. Also, Louis had an illegitimate daughter with an earlier mistress.

Louis died suddenly, alone in New York City's Grand Central Station in 1974 at age 73. When he died, Louis was not carrying identification. Thus police investigators had to discover who Louis Kahn had been after which his unusual multiple family arrangement became public knowledge. Nathaniel was 11 years old then; now, these many years later, his documentary takes the form of a quest to discover thourgh Louis'buildings who his father had been.

The film is somewhat dichotomous. There's the personal side of Louis' life and there's the professional side with his extraordinary achievements as an architect. While there's no question that personal aspects often help illuminate artistic accomplishment, "My Architect," as a son's personal investigation, tends to devote more time to family matters than understanding Kahn's accomplishment. Indeed, the film makes clear that Kahn, the driven, workaholic architect, put his work ahead of all three families at all times. The work throws far more light on the relationships than the relationships do on the work.

Nathaniel's film uses the usual documentary techniques of interviews, talking heads, archival footage, photographs, letters and newspapers for telling its story. New footage takes us on tours of many of the important Kahn buildings: the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Salk Institute in La Jolla, the library at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, the National Assembly in Dacca, Bangladesh. Louis' friend, art historian Vincent Skully, characterizes the Kahn buildings as works of symmetry, order, geometric clarity, and great weight; they are enduring monuments.

Not only are Kahn's buildings of exceptional beauty, but they are also a highly individual expression of modernism, totaly different from the prevailing walls of glass and steel that had come to dominate the cities of the world. Kahn's are buildings with a distinct air of mysticism influenced by its historical predecessors from the Egyptian Pyramids to medieval castles to 19th century industrial architecture.

Nathaniel, troubled by his family's history, insists that his half-sisters answer the question: "Are we a family?" Then virtually badgering his mother, Harriet, "Don't you get angry with him?" She doesn't answer, instead throwing the question back at him. He remains silent but his lingering conflicts are clear from the tone of the question itself. Wasn't Nathaniel listening when, in an earlier interview, Susannah Jones, his mother's close friend, says with conviction that Harriet's was "an immense, lifelong love...That kind of love is on the side of life and is a good thing?"

Seeing Kahn's spectacular, emotionally provocative architecture and Nathaniel's quest to discover through them who his father was is certainly worth seeing.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars nice documentary, but...
Peoples attention on this movie is drawn by the name Louis Kahn, an Architect with an impressing oeuvre. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Mavelo

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting architecture
Documentary by Nathaniel Kahn in which he attempts to find out more about his father, the late architect Louis A. Read more

Published 16 months ago by D. Brusca

4.0 out of 5 stars My Architect
I found this a fascinating film - really thoughtful and measured. It has the intrigue of relationships, family etc with a wider context of his work and his legacy - some amazing... Read more

Published on 6 Sep 2005

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