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Following Sean (2004)

tomatometer

88

Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 1

No consensus yet.

audience

73

liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 738

My Rating

Movie Info

A child's perspective on the Haight-Ashbury counterculture of the 1960s informs filmmaker Ralph Arlyck's film concerning the perceptive and precocious four-year-old and his unique perspective on the chaos that was sweeping a nation. A student at San Francisco State University at the time when police in riot gear flooded the campus and revolutionary-minded idealists waxed poetic in the streets, Ralph Arlyck was befriended by a young boy named Sean who would occasionally come down from his

Unrated, 1 hr. 28 min.

Documentary, Special Interest

Mar 27, 2007

Docurama

All Critics (25) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (19) | Rotten (4) | DVD (4)

What emerges from Arlyck's musings is a penetrating cinematic essay on how generations in the last century struggled to take hold of history and reconfigure the shape of daily life.

May 3, 2006 Full Review Source: Newsday | Comment
Newsday
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Arlyck spends more time following himself and his own lefty family than checking up on Sean.

May 3, 2006 Comment
New York Post
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Ralph Arlyck's ruminative essay film picks up the trail of Sean Farrell, the former child of San Francisco hippies and the subject of his 1969 short film Sean.

May 2, 2006 Comment
New York Times
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Arlyck's compulsion is to our great fortune. Patient and elegant, his film is a quietly devastating meditation on family, work, and the unrelenting passage of time.

May 2, 2006 Full Review Source: Village Voice | Comment
Village Voice
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Arlyck's new film is an honest and thoughtful examination of the people and events that most influenced his adult life and what the '60s really meant to the bigger picture, viewed with the benefit of hindsight.

April 7, 2006 Full Review Source: Boston Globe | Comment
Boston Globe
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Character-driven and full of tender contradictions, the film is reminiscent of a Chekhov short story. And as such, it touches on a universality that transcends VW buses and Bush-era politics.

March 23, 2006 Full Review Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Comment
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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While the film is ostensibly a "49 Up" style look at how Sean the child grew into the man, what it really is is a penetrating look at how Arlyck the young man grew into an old one.

April 20, 2007 Full Review Source: Capital Times (Madison, WI) | Comment
Capital Times (Madison, WI)

A confused and ridiculous home movie.

April 10, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat

In what has become rather epidemic among U.S. documentary filmmakers, Ralph Arlyck's Following Sean is ultimately more about Ralph Arlyck than its ostensible title subject.

April 7, 2007 Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | Comment
Filmcritic.com

An uncommonly perceptive look at the counter-culture and the difficulties of preserving a sense of freedom and integrity in American society.

March 30, 2007 Full Review Source: rec.arts.movies.reviews | Comment
rec.arts.movies.reviews

The people in this film are so genuine, so real and familiar, that the story maintains power even if the form occasionally vexes.

June 16, 2006 Full Review Source: Oregonian | Comment
Oregonian

Arlyck is as pleasant and self-effacing a guide as one could ask for through this meandering but still focused work.

May 20, 2006 Full Review Source: Film Journal International | Comment
Film Journal International

Part of the film's charm lies in its evocation of a generational mural that includes old Marxists, flower children and the progeny of red-diaper babies.

May 18, 2006 Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | Comment
L.A. Weekly

Aryck lightly but complicatedly distills our existence into a series of dichotomies (rich/poor, idle/mobile), using his available subjects to tap into the source of what stunts us emotionally and separates us as philosophical beings.

April 21, 2006 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

It's a must-see for documentary lovers.

March 23, 2006 Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | Comment
St. Paul Pioneer Press

... we may see something of our own journey reflected in [the documentary].

January 24, 2006 Full Review Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Comment
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Following Sean

I HIGHly reccomend this doc to everyone.

August 11, 2007
tsigur
Tim Sigur

Super Reviewer

In the 1960's filmmaker Ralph Arlyck lived for a time in the legendary Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. While there, he befriended a 4-year old boy, Sean Farrell, who he made a documentary about. "Following Sean" is a documentary Arlyck made about his return to San Francisco thirty years later to find

November 29, 2007
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

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