Photographic Memory Reviews
Boston Phoenix
Hoping to unlock not only the mysteries of his own past, but also to better understand the alienation he feels from his son, McElwee has forged another triumph in this portrait of fractured love.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Shared Darkness
Beguiling and homespun -- full of both answers and questions, feelings and wonder. A great little travelogue mystery that also delicately assays the human condition.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
ColeSmithey.com
Bittersweet though it may be, "Photographic Memory" reminds us that time is fleeting and all memories fade - even those captured on film.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Top CriticFilmmaker Ross McElee continues his obsessive self-reflection in this entertaining meditation on aging and memory.
Film Journal International
This modest coda to Ross McElwee's autobiographical trilogy will interest fans of this eccentric documentarian but bore those less familiar with his work.
rec.arts.movies.reviews
Like Harvey Pekar and Spalding Gray, Ross McElwee makes art out of the often sad and desperate moments of his life. And like them, he is damned good at it.
I would like to think that one day Adrian might look at this documentary and see it as a supreme act of paternal love.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Leonard Maltin's Picks
McElwee is a homespun philosopher who finds exceptional moments in everyday life and records it all through his camera lens.
The most vivid strand of "Photographic Memory" is Mr. McElwee's changing relationship with his son, Adrian, now in his 20s.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Some might characterize what filmmaker Ross McElwee does as navel-gazing. But in the hands of this veteran documentarian, that which might be self-indulgent egomania from a lesser artist is often the stuff of quiet revelation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6.5
It's a personal journey, but one that speaks to universal ideas about aging, fatherhood and the way, as Maurice once put it, that "time wears on a photograph, erodes it, until all of its context is gone."
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Proves a bracing and sometimes uncomfortable peek into private fears and regrets about mortality and missed opportunities.
Slant Magazine
Ross McElwee is less anxious of death itself than of finally comprehending the vast faultiness of the life he's lived.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Movies.com
I'd say this film, in spite of its very universal appeal, is mainly of interest to McElwee fans, but it's very easy to become a McElwee fan.
