My Architect is filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn's intimate exploration of his father's life. Louis Kahn, the renowned architect, was found dead in Penn Station in 1974. He died in massive debt. His obituary in The New York Times mentioned Kahn's importance to modern architecture, but did not mention that he had a son. As it turned out, very few people knew that Louis Kahn led a kind of double life. He had a wife and daughter, but he also had two other children by two mistresses. Nathaniel traces his
father's past, from his childhood to his prominence in the world of architecture. He interviews Louis' peers, including Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, and I.M. Pei. He also interviews his own mother and his two half sisters. The filmmaker tries to reconcile his father's prestige with his financial ruin, and his passion for his work with his insensitive treatment of the women in his life and the children he fathered. He also travels the globe examining his father's legacy -- the buildings he designed throughout the world. My Architect was shown at New Directors/New Films in 2003. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
The young Kahn is not a graceful filmmaker. Yet the subject matter is engrossing for anyone interested in architecture and also one of its greatest practitioners.
By the end of My Architect, Kahn has learned that the central contradiction of his father's life can't be resolved -- and that realization becomes the filmmaker's solace and the film's triumph.
Overall [Nathaniel Kahn's] attempt to find his father in his buildings, scars and all, is credible and well-paced, with neat visual rhymes that circle back to points raised earlier.
What makes this movie riveting is not its subject, but the huge hole evident in the biographer's soul, a space he desperately tries to fill by speaking with those once close to his father.
I'm sorry, but this was just too long and extremely uninteresting. Yes, Louis Kahn was a great architect, but it doesn't mean he is warranted a complete psychological analysis post-mortem. I feel bad for his son, but it doesn't mean I want to spend two hours with him sorting out his daddy issues.
"My Architect: A Son's Journey" is a documentary by and about Nathaniel Kahn on an emotional odyssey seeking to understand his father, Louis Kahn, who died at the age of 73, bankrupt, of a heart attack in a bathroom in Penn Station, New York City on the way back from India. At the time, Nathaniel was 11. Louis Kahn
was an acclaimed architect. He also had three separate families. Throughout the film, Nathaniel talks to family members, former colleagues and cab drivers who all recall his father. "My Architect: A Son's Journey" is about what we leave behind after we die. Louis Kahn left behind more than most. This includes not only the fabulous buildings that he helped build(and one very, very cool boat), but also the three families and the three women who loved him.
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