My Architect: A Son's Journey
Directed by Nathaniel Kahn
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
My Architect: A Son's Journey is a documentary about a son's search for his father, the famous architect Louis Kahn. Despite knowing the identity of his father, his search is somewhat reminiscent of the adoptive child's search for their "real" parent. Louis Kahn died when Nathaniel was 11 years old, and as a child he was visited on a weekly basis. Kahn did not spend more time with him because he had another wife and child as well as another mistress and another child with with that person - in other words, three "families". In addition, Nathaniel was never publicly acknowledged to be his son. Though he did know him through visits and due to his acclaim as an architect, there was much that remained unknown or hidden from his son.
The film follows Nathaniel on his journey to understand both the public and private lives of his father. A Who's Who of renowned architects, including Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, and Moshe Safdie speak fondly of the groundbreaking architect as the film goes on a tour of his most important works. Son-director Nathaniel seeks to demonstrate a link between the elusive man and his buildings and repeatedly proclaims that Kahn's edifices are "spiritual." At first, when encountering his work, such as the Salk Institute in all its massive, brutal, prison-like grey concrete this seems like a bit of architectural ideology and father-worship that is hard to swallow. However, by the film's end, as we see the emotional reactions of people to the huge complex he created for the capital of Bangladesh, his massive bulk style of building becomes something of significance - a tribute to the land and its people.
The private side of Kahn is not as easily resolved - we see Nathaniel watching a taped interview of his first wife (now deceased), searching for clues about the man and his relationships. Interviews with his two (living) mistresses seem emotional but withholding. There is something about his strange arrangements and the world of another era that cannot be accurately discussed or completely explained to the son (or audience). Nathaniel gets together with the two daughters from the other relationships and they talk about what bits they knew of each other's existence and if they should regard each other as family members. The constrained unutterable pain of the spouses vs. the child wondering what went on/who was this person was reminiscent of Be Good, Smile Pretty, director Tracy Tragos' search to find out who her father was. He was killed in Vietnam when he was twenty-five and she was three months old. A trunk that had not been opened in ages (to contain the mother's pain) contained what would be gold for Tracy - photographs and a home movie of her father holding and hugging her, his baby girl. Her search outside the family involved tracking down those who knew him or met him in Vietnam.
While there is something found in Tracy Tragos' rediscovered home movie of her father holding her, it is also testament of a bond lost. By tracking down his fellow soldiers who joked with him as well as those who knew the details of his death she seeks to extend and flesh out the link contained in the short home-movie images of father and child. Old film footage also appears in My Architect, another lost father in present in a film - film providing a weird illusory proximity that provides an image of a father that remains forever out of reach of the viewing child. In the archival footage of Kahn in My Architect, Kahn is seen discussing projects with his colleagues but in many of the included clips Kahn is walking alone, or looking into the camera, not speaking, a silent figure - a fitting image of a man who kept so much of who he was to himself.
The Lamp. July 2004