from Design-L
http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0312&L=design-l&O=D&P=8498

My own take on this film is (of course) not as adoring.  The portrayal of
the architecture is mired in the searing personal saga of a boy's desperate
attempt to love his father.  I find it particularly ironic (perhaps doubly
ironic) that what I believe to be among the best architecture produced in
the century, but virtually unknown to "middle america" is getting to be
known, but not because of its architectural existence per se, but because of
the seamy, semi-sordid personal life of its architect, and his son's having
dramatized it in a film, produced and publicized by his girlfriend.  When I
heard people leaving the theater exclaiming about louis kahn as a great
architect, i was sure it wasn't because they ever saw one of his buildings
in person and came to this conclusion on their own.  It was because a
"critically acclaimed" documentary was telling them this was so, and their
exclamations are therefore third hand and superficial.

It was also somewhat amusing to see the time lapse sequence of the kimball
art museum, set to Beethoven's Ode to Joy, a bells and whistles portrayal of
perhaps one of the most poignant examples of "silence and light" in kahn's
"ouevre" (sorry for the french....).  talk about gilding a lily!  and, again
ironically, the majesty of that building was just destroyed in that
portrayal, AND it also seemed charmingly mis-placed and dated.  how can you
try to present kahn's work as "dramatic" in this way when you have gehry's
TRUE architectural pyrotechnics gracing the front pages of the press?

I did find the personal story portrayed by nathaniel to be interesting,
poignant and well told, both as narrative and as a documentary, partially
because of my own familiarity with the philadelphia players in the story.
Interesting in their omission were Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown,
who were interviewed extensively, but remained on the cutting room floor
(their stories didn't fit the narrative, they were told; they thought they
might have been not adoring enough; i think their professional interaction
with kahn, in which the "master" learned from the student, and also their
personal relationship (venturi is nathaniel kahn's godfather, for example)
would have added much more to the story than the gratuitous inclusion of
robert stern, who didn't really say anything interesting about kahn, and
especially gehry, who (i believe) never even met the man (but of course he
is our pre-eminent architect, so he MUST be included...))

Perhaps weirdly but incisively representative of the film (in my mind) is
the sequence of nathaniel kahn rollerblading in the salk institute courtyard
in la jolla, playfully hopping over the sluice, the great architect's
biological offspring interacting with his intellectual one (the intellectual
son playing with the biological institute!).  Truly an awful cinematic
moment, hackneyed, sentimental, camp.  BUT, that clip encapsulated what the
film was about in an essential way.  It's about the magnificent
architectural achievment of a man not only being discovered by his neglected
son, but being celebrated (and publicized) in a much more effective way than
the architecture could ever achieve on its own.  Dionysius uber Apollo,
(again)!

RONALD EVITTS ARCHITECT