User Reviews

My impression, having seen this documentary, is that Nathaniel Kahn ended up with more questions than he had before he made the film.

He took five years to make it, a labour of love and longing. I can only imagine the turmoil of the editing process, what to leave in, what to take out.

His father, the renowned architect Louis Kahn,comes across as a man too selfish and self-absorbed to be emotionally available to even one wife not alone three. But like many men of his character, he attracted women who were spellbound by the remoteness and entranced by the creativity.

One of his mistresses said he was "accessible" but that is never explored. Other comments by people who knew him well suffer the same fate. A pity.

The tension between the three half-siblings in the room of a home Louis designed is also palpable. The unsaid hovers over the conversation. The only tracks that his father left were in the buildings he left behind, some great, some not so great.

I was captivated by the music ship and the Salk Institute. Saddened by the baby mothers who got caught forever by his callous impregnations never more exemplified than what he said to the director's mother upon being told of her pregnancy - "not again!"

8 out of 10, beautifully filmed, genuine.

It appears, in this case at least, the son is not the father of the man.

Nominated for best documentary feature at 2004's Academy Awards, My Architect follows filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn in his quest to find out about his father, the legendary architect Louis I Kahn. Lou Kahn died in 1974, when Nate was 11 years old, leaving behind an incredible but limited body of work, unpaid debts and three separate families all living within a few kilometres of each other.

My Architect follows Kahn's life through chronologically examining his buildings, and interspersing their beauty with the story of a charismatic, but selfish and emotionally immature genius. As the son which Lou never publicly acknowledged during his lifetime, Nate has delicately placed himself in the story without overpowering the main focus.

When examining the magnificent Salk Institute in California, Nate evokes his father's mythic use of space and light in his buildings, making it a peaceful and fascinating experience for viewers. The shot of Nate rollerblading in Salk's smoky white central meeting place emphasises the building's harmony with nature. It's breathtaking. My Architect also covers the difficulty Louis Kahn had with getting his designs accepted. Several fantastical buildings exist only on paper, dismissed by more practical architects and property developers. It wasn't until Louis Kahn went to the East that his visions were enthusiastically embraced. In India, where he built the Indian

Institute of Management, a former co-worker describes him as a guru. In Bhangladesh, where he built the magnificent National Assembly Building, citizens consider him a father of democracy.

Watching My Architect is a wonderful way to begin or continue learning about architecture and the importance of space. But it's the irony of Lou Kahn's egotism combined with the transcendence of his work that will inspire you. 4 stars.

Nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Academy Award, this HBO documentary follows Nathaniel Kahn as he tries to discover more about the father he never knew, the great architect Louis Kahn. Dying alone of a heart attack in a train station 25 years before, Louis Kahn was left unclaimed for days due to him mysteriously blacking out information on his passport. He was married, but not to Nathaniel's mother - she was one of numerous mistresses he had during his later years. The film takes Nathaniel on a journey where he interviews friends, family, and colleagues, as well as visiting some of his father's spectacular works.

The father-son story of discovery has been done numerous times in cinema, to various degrees of success, but I've never experienced a film so personal. It is peppered with scenes of raw emotion, including a moving scene where Nathaniel reveals himself to be Louis' son to a man that knew :ouis well. Yet amongst all the emotion, the stand-out scenes are the sections where he visits his fathers works. The Salk Institute is simply an outstanding piece of art, and the film captures it beautifully in all its glory. Even though it is arguable that such a journey needs such a detailed account, I found the film slightly overlong, and I found my interest sliding at times. But this is a film that successfully explores the complexities of the man, whether you feel he was a philanderer, a tyrant, or a troubled genius, through the eyes of a son who wants to see good in and love his father. I have no doubt that Louis Kahn, were he still alive, would have been deeply moved.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

My Architect by Nathaniel Kahn is that ancient story, the search for a man's father. Nathaniel was the illegitimate son, the `bastard,' of Louis Kahn, the architect who died in Penn Station, New York, in 1974 coming back from Bangladesh. Kahn had three children, but only one by his wife; the second daughter and only son were by two other women. The architect was a nomad and a man obsessed with his work. He saw Nathaniel and his mother once a week, but Nathaniel never got to know his father well. Lou Kahn died when his son was only eleven, and the secret children and their mothers weren't supposed to come to Lou Kahn's funeral, though they did.

So 25 years after his father's death, at the age of 36, Nathaniel set out to make this film to find out who his father was - and he has done an amazing and triumphant job. He begins with a sketch of Kahn's origins, the fire that disfigured his face (it looked pock-marked), and his early displacement to America. We learn about Kahn's development over time and the sources of his style. They look back to the archaic and the monumental, not to anything his contemporaries did.

Nathaniel visits all the significant people and places in his father's life as well as a number of important architects. He starts out with `the man with the glasses,' Philip Johnson. Johnson talks about what a `nice guy' Kahn was. `All the rest of us were bastards,' he says. Johnson's point is there was a lack of jealousies or rivalry, a selflessness: that focus on the work; it's also clear Kahn is a member of the Johnson pantheon.. I.M. Pei makes one thing emphatically clear: he considers Kahn his superior. `It's quality, not quantity, that matters,' he says rapidly and bluntly when Nathaniel suggests Pei was more `successful.' Kahn may only have completed a few buildings, Pei says, but they are great masterpieces. Later in the film Frank Gehry says Kahn was his original inspiration, that without Lou Kahn, he would not be. It's plain that the most famous architectural figures of our day are all in awe of this man. A failure morally, a man who couldn't do right by the people closest to him in his life, Louis Kahn is perhaps the greatest American architect. That fact emerges as powerfully as do his personal shortcomings.

Nathaniel `interviews' the great buildings, too, most beautifully and movingly. His camera scans their spaces. It peers at them far and near in different lights and shadows. We even see him from far above, roller blading around the space encompassed by the Salk Center in La Jolla, casually making friends with and taking possession of it after an interview with the man Kahn worked with when the center was designed. These viewings of the buildings, a revelation of the man's achievement, presented for the most part without commentary, are deeply moving both in and of themselves and in the context of the searching portrait of the man behind them.

To skip forward to the end: in the film's final segment Nathaniel Kahn tells Shulyar Wares, the Bangladeshi architect, that his three days of photographing the government building at Dhakka, Kahn's last great project, will only yield at most ten minutes of film. `Ten minutes!' Wares exclaims. `You would try to do justice to this building in ten minutes! To its spirit, its power, the ambiguities of its spaces!' Wares then speaks about Kahn's achievement and character. It's not unusual for a great artist to fall short as a man, he says: the one failure may be necessary for the other success. It's an eloquent, seemingly spontaneous speech, and a perfect finale to the portrait.

It's hard to do justice to this film without summarizing it scene by scene. It's the cumulative effect of the interviews, plus the fine photography and the brilliant editing, that all add up to an extraordinary portrait of a great artist and a flawed but complex man. Nathaniel Kahn's simple bravery before the camera leads to a series of intensely revealing, often moving scenes with the people in Kahn's life. There are quite searching conversations with the two other women, including the filmmaker's mother. Nathaniel Kahn never falters or spoils the tone: he isn't confrontational, but neither does he avoid hard questions. He's serious, but without an ounce of self-importance.

And while the interviews are powerful, they are paced by visits to the few but great buildings, whose effect at times is transcendent, and needs no inflated commentary from Nathaniel or anyone else.

It's astonishing how the film modulates from some rather petty remarks by men who worked with Lou in Fort Worth (who considered the architect impractical and airy-fairy) to the building that resulted, backed up by Beethoven's Ninth. If you can look at a building with Beethoven's Ninth as background and the music seems right, you know it's a great building. And this is the revelation of My Architect: that Louis Kahn's buildings are magnificent, radiant visions of serenity, vastness, and beauty: that they're among the artistic masterpieces of the twentieth century and we're fools not to go see them. I for one plan to make the pilgrimage to La Jolla for the Salk Center as soon as I can.

The triumph of Nathaniel Kahn's documentary is its balance. While the exploration of the buildings and the processes behind them goes along, so also the search for the secrets of Kahn's life continues through the course of the film. We realize that indeed as Wares says, Kahn's weaknesses and his virtues are inseparable. If he was a bit of a Don Juan, it's because he was a man of great personal charm, a man without poses or pretenses whom everyone liked - though sometimes they had to give up working with him to save their health and sanity, because he worked so relentlessly. Neither of the `other women' would have had it any other way. The first found working with him tremendously rewarding despite the painful secrecy (she was an architect too), and the second, the filmmaker's mother, still believes that Lou was about to come and live with them when he died. And if Kahn was irresponsible toward women, he was passionately committed to his work, and the result is a lasting monument of triumphant buildings.

There is a surprising amount of footage of Kahn himself, so that his face, his stature, even the way he looked walking in and out of his offices in Philadelphia, are always a reality to us. It's appropriate that Kahn died in the huge train station, his address mysteriously obliterated from his passport. He died as a nomad, exhausted from his great final project in Bangladesh, driven, isolated. Nathaniel even managed to find and interview - in California! - the railroad employee who found his father's body in Penn Station 25 years before. The whole film seems a combination of diligence and serendipity. It's a homage with equal measures of passion and restraint. Though a search for self in a way, it's selfless and compassionate.

Documentaries in which sons and daughters seek to understand a parent and, by the process, their own lives are not that uncommon. Also not uncommon are results that reflect lack of talent, a failure of introspection, an abundance of narcissism and, perhaps, an unsubtle quest for publicly-splashed revenge for countless past hurts, real and fantasized. What is unusual is a brilliant, fair and engrossing portrait of a fascinating parent and "My Architect: A Son's Journey" is that rare achievement.

Louis Kahn emigrated to this country as a child, his face irreparably and brutally scarred by an accident. He and his parents settled in Philadelphia where the talented youngster loved art and music. Soon he became enamored of buildings and decided only an architect's career would answer his creative abilities.

Kahn became an architect but as this film shows it took a long time before he attracted the attention of the leaders in his field. One architect suggests that he was a victim of the "yellow armband," that anti-Semitism that along with bias against women was long a disreputable aspect of the American profession of architecture.

When he did achieve notice, he was seen, clearly accurately, as a self-assured, workaholic prophet exclaiming unyielding demands that his vision and only his vision be realized. That inflexibility was the reason that while he drew wonderful plans for many buildings he built but a few. The interview with an aged gentleman who fired Kahn in Philadelphia because of his unacceptable dream of a transformed urban center where people left their cars on the perimeter and walked into the city is hilarious.

Kahn was a born teacher and some of the extensive archival footage here shows him with students, his voice steady but passionate, their gazes respectful and intense.

Many architects were interviewed by director, writer and project honcho Nathaniel Kahn, the architect's only son. Some are world famous - I. M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stone, Moshe Safdie, Frank Gehry and the still active nonagenarian, Philip Johnson. Their comments paint a vivid picture of this idealistic but in the end financially unsuccessful designer of buildings that blended the castles, fortresses and grand buildings of past centuries into designs for the present. Kahn's buildings are shown, among the most impressive being the Salk Research Laboratories in La Jolla, CA. To me his style has a neo-Romantic air deadened by too much blank space that repels rather than attracts human interaction.

But Kahn's son was after more than the story of his father, the architect. For many years Louis Kahn had three families: a wife with whom he had a daughter and two long-term relationships, one of which produced a daughter, the other the son. Kahn visited his son at the mother's home often but at the end of an evening mother and son would drive Kahn back to the marital home. Nathaniel clearly wanted to know about this unusual set of relationships but he doesn't appear to be scarred by what was certainly a strange affair for a little boy.

When Nathaniel was a young boy Louis Kahn died of a massive heart attack in the men's room of New York's Pennsylvania Station after returning from India where he had pitched one of his massive projects, another one that was never built. At that point his Philadelphia firm was at least $500,000 in debt and had he lived a trip to the federal bankruptcy court was probably in the offing.

Kahn left several monumental structures of which the government building in Bangladesh is clearly the biggest. A teary local architect hails Kahn for having created a building where democracy may (and hopefully will) flourish.

Fellow architect Moshe Safdie opines that there might have been something fitting in Kahn's suffering a mortal heart attack in a train station given his incessant globetrotting. I disagree: it's sadly ironic that Kahn should die in the faceless replacement for one of America's true architectural gems, the old Pennsylvania Station, wrecked to make way for a sterile replacement with no character and no continuation of civic memory.

There are a number of emotional moments filmed during the younger Kahn's journey, including with his half-sisters and his mother, but they're genuine and moving, not maudlin and staged. Historians of architecture will always study Kahn. His son found reasons to remember him as a flawed but very iconoclastic and ultimately private man.

9/10.

My Architect is a great film about Nathaniel Kahn's search for himself via the legacy of his famous Architect father, Louis Kahn, dead since 1974. The film builds slowly, but perfectly, and what starts out as a seemingly lost fortysomething's identity crisis unfolds into a beautiful tale with much deeper meaning with regard to the importance of love, loss, family and perhaps more importantly, our life's work.

I had never heard of Louis Kahn prior to this film, although I was vaguely familiar with some of his work. Through the words (both good and bad) of Louis Kahn's colleagues, you get a very good sense of what Nathaniel must have felt as memories are recalled and stories retold. Sometimes it seemed as though these people were telling Nathaniel how to feel about his father. As I listened to each recollection, my own opinion of this man would range from beautiful to horrible, sometimes in the span of a moment, so you get a good feel for the rollercoaster that Nathaniel's emotions must have been riding.

The final sequence in Bangladesh totally made the film for me. The reverence of which the people of Bangladesh spoke of Louis Kahn's work tied all the loose ends together nicely for me, and, hopefully, for Nathaniel.

I think Nathaniel Kahn finally found what he was looking for.

I can't say I warmed to Louis Kahn or his architecture. Each edifice seems peculiarly ponderous, brutally imposing themselves on the landscape. Buildings so wrapped up in their own sparse, Cartesian ideal that they offer no comfort or concession to the humanity expected to inhabit them. Could they in fact be a microcosm of the man himself?

So bound up was he in his accomplishments that he avoided confronting the disaster of his own personal life. With three estranged families of fatherless children, he left a swathe of heartache in those that fell into his gravitational pull.

Is this the cost exacted for great works, the tragedy being that the price was paid by those that loved the man?

What a tribute to his father! He set out on a quest to learn more about a man whom he knew little of, and by the end of the journey, I believe Nathaniel Kahn is content with what he learned and personally felt. The film is 5 years in the making, and a quarter of a century after his death, Louis I. Kahn's total commitment in his work - consistent strong desire to build buildings that are meaningful to humanity and timeless to the whole world, with insight into his life is proudly depicted by his son Nathaniel in the documentary "My Architect: A Son's Journey".

The film is by no means an anthology of Louis' work. There are plenty of books and archived materials that have records of Louis Kahn's projects and buildings. This documentary works like a mystery, writer-director and co-producer Nathaniel Kahn was searching for the man whom he briefly knew as his father.

The film is in chapters. In "Heading West," we're at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies at La Jolla, California. It's a sight worth beholding - Kahn's integral concept of building and environment, optimizing light for the scientists at work is amazing. From a former colleague who worked with 'Lou' 35 years ago, we hear about his meticulous attention to detail, also how 'rambunctious' he could be - certainly didn't mince words in his criticism. A memorable scene is when the camera pulled back wide and we see Nathaniel skating around at the plaza area of the Salk Institute - a tiny figure, like a child happily playing in the bowl of his father's hands.

The "Immigrant" segment brought us to meet Anne Tyng, the architect who collaboratively worked with 'Lou' and also bore him a daughter, Alex. Now at 80, Tyng's return with Nathaniel's film crew to the Bath House project at Trenton, New Jersey, was nostalgic. In "Go to sea," we get to see the Barge for American Wind Symphony Orchestra - all made of steel, and meeting Robert Boudreau, who was surprised by Nathaniel when he finally told him he's 'Lou's' son. Boudreau was touched, he said he had seen Nathaniel when he was six, with his Mom (Harriet Pattison), and he was not to tell anyone that Lou had a son. It was a 'chokingly' emotional moment of reunion.

Like his father "The Nomad," Nathaniel traveled to Jerusalem, and learned about the Synagogue project that his father began but not realized. He visited the wailing wall, and seeing his yarmulke kept falling off/being 'breezed off' his head gave me a sense that he need not be 'totally' Jewish to be his father's son. We continue with sitting down with his two half-sisters at the "Family Matters" segment. We also hear him conversing with his Mom at Maine, and from talking to previous office personnel at his father's office, we come to know how his father intensely worked and practically lived there, sleeping on a carpet on the office floor, weekends and all.

"The End of the Journey" brought us to Ahmedabad, India, to the Indian Institute of Management building. Talking with architect B.V. Doshe was a revelation. In the end, Nathaniel found a very much alive Louis Kahn, his father - his spirits live within him. This documentary is very much a tear-jerker for me. I was teary-eyed most of the time - it was very touching and am in awe of the man, the architect and his son, and the women in his life besides his famous works and buildings. Louis I. Kahn wanted to give his love to the 'whole world,' juggling work and three families (you might say he has three women in his life to keep his inspiration going). As Shamsul Wares, the architect at the Capital of Bangladesh complex (completed 9 years after 'Lou's' death) so poignantly noted: Louis Kahn has given the people of Bangladesh a lot, spending time at Bangladesh, understanding the culture of the place and people - as well as giving them democracy through what he has achieved, and for such a dedicated man, usually the people close to him he'd often miss seeing. It seems the price of being great comes with inevitable personal sacrifices.

This film reminds me of King Vidor's "The Fountainhead" 1949 (good dramatic story in B/W with music by Max Steiner), based on Ayn Rand's novel, with Gary Cooper as the uncompromising architect who stands by his own ideals, and Patricia Neal as the parallel supportive woman in his life.

Video Vault By Shawn K. Inlow

My Architect: A Son's Journey 2003 - Nathaniel Kahn Not Rated: 116minutes Vault Rating: 7

What a thing to be fatherless. "My Architect: A Son's Journey" follows Philadelphia filmmaker, Nathaniel Kahn, as he desperately seeks answers from his father, the renowned architect, Louis I. Kahn, dead these 30 years.

Louis Kahn died in a train station in 1974 and left behind more than one family. The funeral service, when the filmmaker was just a boy, was, shall we say, an unpleasant surprise.

We find that Nathaniel only knew his father en passant, from his sporadic visits with his mother, whom, we are told, he loved deeply. This movie is about a boy seeking his father and perhaps himself by visiting his work, as if the magnificent structures hold some secret.

To be sure, Louis Kahn was a gifted architect, but "architect" is a cold word. The man was a sculptor on a grand scale who spoke of his craft in airy terms of silence and art.

Among his notable works, explored lovingly in the film, are the Salk Institute (1965), The Kimball Art Museum (1972) and the monumental capitol complex in Bangladesh (1983). The portion of the film where Nathaniel first visits Dhaka, Bangladesh, finds the work, but not the man.

The film benefits greatly from having much footage of the very public man as he worked in New York City and as a professor at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. Many of Khan's contemporaries and collaborators also help flesh out the filmmaker's ghost- father.

Even so, the viewer seems not to come to a particularly satisfying place. The answers Nathaniel Khan is looking for seem hollow. Not good enough.

In scenes where the director meets with his half sisters, both from different mothers, one can feel the tensions of the years, the slights and hurts. One might expect them to burst into anger, but only the camera saves them from hostilities. Each of these children has visibly lost something.

It might be pointed out that Khan, who seemed a driven perfectionist, never became rich. Instead, he became noteworthy. It was as if he sacrificed his family for his art. This is a crushingly sad and great thing.

April 28, 2005

When Nathaniel Kahn embarked into this voyage, he hardly knew who his father really was. By the end of the film, he found him and comes to terms with the strange life he lived as a child.

Louis Kahn was the father. He was an architect's architect. His designs were perhaps too complex, as he tried to create buildings that didn't conform with trends popular at that time. It is ironic that he never achieved the fame that came so easy to some of his contemporaries. He had a vision and he never strayed from it. We can see characteristics of his unique style in the buildings he left behind as a legacy to humanity. Every one of his creations are unique in that they don't imitate works from other architects.

Louis Kahn's life was rather complicated. He was married, yet he had affairs with two of his assistants that produced a girl and a boy, besides the legitimate daughter he had with his wife.

As a boy, Nathaniel Kahn's life was lived in a secluded area, away from his father, who only visited late at night. Louis Kahn never recognized these children, although it is very clear they all knew about the others existence.

It is tragic that Louis Kahn died alone in Grand Central Station when he was returning from a trip without making peace with the women and children he never acknowledged as his own by his side. He probably cared a great deal about all his children, but he remains an aloof figure throughout the film. We never get to know the man, although at the end, Nathaniel, in his quest to discover his father's life, finds most of the missing pieces of the puzzle.

This is a personal account on the life of an artist. Thanks to that son, who has the courage to tell the story, we are almost prying into the lives of Louis Kahn and his extended family.

i think the title of the movie describes it well. if you are looking for a documentary on louis kahn and his work, you'll have to look somewhere else. although some of that is covered in this film.

of course, i eat up pretty much anything i'm fed, and i don't know much of the family history revolving around this case. so i believed what i was told about nathaniel and his father, etc.

for what this movie was, i thought it was pretty good. a little slow and grabbing for attention at time, i wish that nathaniel would have focused a little more on his father's work than his family drama (although much of the history was interesting, louis was a bit of a player).

this really is a journey through someone's life, and i was happy to tag along for the experience. a learning experience for me, and so it seems, for the filmmaker as well.

oh, and the footage of some of kahn's work is *stunning*

This is a profound and moving work about the creation of art, that which is uniquely human and cannot be produced by nature, the cost of genius and the search for transcendence and what in the end constitutes family, i.e, all of us. I was very much moved by the family discussion that Nathaniel had with his sisters about the shortcomings of their father as it was set in a beautiful home that seemed to radiate warmth that Lou had created. And although Esther seems so cold in her discussion about Lou's inability to make money you can appreciate how she at many points in his life must have been a counter-weight to his impulses. Nathaniel did a great job of showing how all of the people in Lou's life fit in and completed it and became as much a part of his work as his own genius. Yes even, or maybe especially, our failures make us who we are. And of course there are the buildings. I had only known Lou Kahn by name and did not really connect his name to his work, they are evidence of grace. Perhaps someday there will be a building where we will all fit, and it will certainly resemble a Lou Kahn building, perhaps the unbuilt temple in Jerusalem. Perhaps there is salvation

I rented this film because it was a documentary and highly rated. It's more a study of a bastard son trying to find out who his biological father was, than anything about architecture.

More than anything else, the underlying theme of the movie is that we have an eccentric, highly praised, possibly genius architect who had little regard for anything or anyone outside is profession.

The tragedy of the film is the broken families he left. His baby-mothers came across more as scorned fans than irresponsible women, which can only have negative results on the children.

That said, Nathaniel, the producer of the film and son of Louis Khan, came across as fairly stable and curious, if not bitter. The people he interviewed were of course more interested in talking about Louis Khan's buildings than his personal problems, but I find the mix of themes made the film interesting.

As for his buildings, I found them like abstract art - strange, non-practical, and usually only appreciated by so-called critics.

I saw this movie 4 times within the course of 2 weeks, and could probably have seen it 4 more times without losing interest.

To me the movie is 3 things: a story about a son's search for information about and connection with his father; the father's story, both personal and as an architect; and an homage to the father's architecture. I find the movie very rich on all accounts.

I found the son's search very moving and one I immediately connected to emotionally. The father's story is very interesting--a lot of mystery but also a lot of information, including film of the father which greatly enriches the story. And the architecture is quite wonderful and presented in a very moving way.

The movie is full of interviews, many quite wise and spiritual. A few folks present "the other side of the coin," so we get a good picture of the contradictions of Louis Kahn, his family and colleagues.

The editing and pace of the film drew me in and kept me engrossed throughout. Especially wonderful was the music.

For me this movie is like going to a concert, a museum and a spiritual event all at the same time, as well as seeing an engrossing story. A wonderful experience!

In this documentary, Nathaniel Kahn, son of architect Louis Khan, sets out on a journey to find out about his father. I knew nothing about Louis Khan, the father, and I found the documentary a thorough and revealing investigation of one very imaginative and unconventional human being. His son revisited his father's past from his birth in 1901-02 in Estonia, where as a child he suffered severe scarring when he burnt his face with hot coals, to his last day in Penn Station, New York City, where his body was found. As a young immigrant, he found his home town of Philadelphia a place where he could excel. Architects such as Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei agreed that he was brilliant, thinking and creating on a grand scale. Another from Fort Worth was visibly angry, comparing his work to a selfish flight of fancy. Through interviews with his partners and their families, we see the lengths he went to in order to keep secret three separate families with two born out of wedlock. One woman was bitter that he never lived up to his promise to marry her. An observer of his work felt that he had such an immense love for all people that he could not show love to the ones closest to him. Nathaniel also talked to taxi drivers and even the man who witnessed him die, who found a parallel in his relationship with his own father. Louis had three children with three women (married to one) and succeeded during his career in keeping his personal life a secret, except to a few people, because in his time, such a scandal would have shaken his career. His architectural works are now viewed as powerful achievements, although they met with decidedly mixed reviews at the time. Colleagues held him in the highest regard, while admitting they knew little about him. In the end, he died in Penn Station, New York, with no proper ID and lay in a morgue unidentified for three days. He was bankrupt after spending time in India and Bangladesh, where he was greatly revered. It was agreed that Louis was a workaholic with a limited output of the highest quality. At the end, we feel that his son Nathaniel would have gained tremendous insight into a life that had seemed mysterious and misunderstood, yet interesting, lived to the fullest and highly original.

After visiting the Kimbell museum in Forth-Worth, Texas, USA, enjoying the art and the architecture (also of the adjacent Modern Art Museum), and having a delightful conversation with the knowledgeable bookstore lady, I purchased this a propos DVD with rather high expectations… and was not disappointed in the least.

The thematic approach, dramatic tension, revealing interviews, archival footage and stunning architecture are also mixed in a coherent whole to explore the life of the late iconic Louis I. Khan.

The documentary begins: contemplative classical music plays, archives are scanned with a reflective shadowy face superimposed, blurring letters symbolically referencing a train window passing a backdrop landscape — a journey —, focus and out of focus, the search eventually culminates to an article in a newspaper. Nathanial Khan reads from the front page of the New York Times where his father is simultaneously praised as the best American architect alive and his death announced.

"When I first read that obituary, I have to admit, I was looking for my own name. I was his child too, his only son. I didn't know my father very well. He never married my mother and he never lived with us (…) He died when I was eleven."

So years later, this illegitimate son is still haunted by unclear fragmented thoughts and feelings about his father who seems to be a great professional and public figure, but who's secretive personal life escapes him and affects him to the point where he intends to do something about it.

"For years, I struggled to be satisfied with the little pieces of my father's life I've been allowed to see, but it wasn't enough. I needed to know him. I needed to find out who he really was. So I set out on a journey, to see his buildings and to find whatever there was left of him out there. It would take me to the other side of the world, looking for the man who left me with so many questions."

So the documentary is two-fold, by a slow systematic discovery of the world-renown architect, we get to know: 1) his ideas, buildings and the architectural perspective and 2) his families, coworkers, people's life he affected and the human perspective

The DVD also offers added insight with a Q&A with the writer/director and additional footage that includes such great Louis I. Khan quotes as "Everything that everybody says is the truth. It's their truth. It might not be factual." and "A good idea that doesn't happen is no idea at all."

This movie is a journey of discovery. Self-discovery and discovery of a man, a great man, yet a human, imperfect like all of us. We get to know him through the eyes of an admiring and slightly bitter son, but with the openness and objectivity to really explore without making easy conclusions and without judging.

By key interviews with people who interacted with him in various capacity. We slowly put some pieces together until that final interview with this man from Bangladesh who really seems to bring it back home with visceral and sensible comments.

Brilliant architect, brilliant documentary.

I never heard of architect, Louis Kahn, until this documentary. In this almost two hour documentary which goes very quickly, his son, Nathaniel Kahn, explores his father's life from Estonia to the slums of North Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia where he studied and taught. He travels to Bangladesh, Israel, Connecticut, Trenton, and La Jolla, California as well as New York City to explore his father's creative genius. Personally, Louis Kahn had three families including his wife, Esther, who refused to give him a divorce and their daughter Sue Ann. Nathaniel includes his family members. Louis also has another half-sister Alexandra Tynge from his father's previous relationship with Anne Tyne, a fellow architect. Louis' passion was his art.

I just returned from viewing this academy award-nominated doc, and I was thoroughly touched and interested in exploring the works of this fellow I'd never heard of before. Of course I'm someone who's captivated with beautiful architecture, so I realize others won't care.

We can only imagine if there had been a couple more visionaries in Philadelphia back in the late 60's when Kahn's plans were a possibility, what a wonderful city center there would be. If you wonder whether you'll see more about the Bangladesh building at the beginning of the movie, be patient, for there it will provide the climax of the film at the end.

His son's personal discoveries in the process of making this film are quite interesting, sometimes touching, and even funny at times. There is one of the most comical anti-visionary rants ever captured on camera.

Rounding out the good points of this doc is a touching musical score with some excellent expressive string music. And expressiveness is a major point to be found in Kahn's architecture. The points made by other architects about the spiritual nature of matter, and how Kahn's buildings brought that out tie together the overall experience of this movie.

An absoloutely wonderful film that works on several levels. It's a story about a great architect, a son seeking his father, about very loving relationships, and about loss. It's also a great flm about architecture.

Very intelligent and very moving. A real treat.

Some documentaries have an interesting topic and create an altogether mesmerizing movie out of it. Others have a very interesting topic but somewhat fizzle out in the middle of it. Still others don't have an interesting topic and fizzle out throughout the whole movie. The last is the case of My Architect: A Son's Journey, a documentary that could have been a moving, loving tribute to Philadelphian architect Louis Kahn. Instead, it's a distant, shallow, and almost mean-spirited look at Kahn's life and buildings, coldly narrated by his son Nathaniel.

Kahn himself is an interesting character-he had not just one but three families. Although after listening to his son talk to us for two hours, it's not hard to understand why he would want to spend as much away from that son as possible. Nathaniel's droll feature narration is not only monotonous and dull, but it seems scripted-almost like someone is telling him how to feel about his father. If he truly did care about his father, then I think he would at least have the dignity of trying to at least act like he cared about his father. It's hard to listen to a man talk about how much he loved his father for two hours when it's obviously not true? Why would Nathaniel even narrate it himself? Instead of giving this BS commentary on his life, why not get someone to read a more impersonal commentary whose voice doesn't start to grate on you soon after the movie begins?

On the other hand, Kahn designed and built some very interesting looking buildings. Many of them were not practical, but they were nice to look at. If only I would have been able to see more of them; the fullscreen presentation really brought down the impact of viewing the buildings. Something that bugged me is that there was nothing about how Kahn got his ideas for his buildings, the ideas behind them. Did he suddenly have ideas pop up into his head, or did he have long, drawn out processes? We never find out. If the members of the Kahn family never found out, I would be OK with that, as long as they didn't keep us wondering about it.

But not only was Nathaniel's narration hard to take, but the film itself isn't very interesting. In fact, some parts are just plain boring. It seems padded to the two hour runtime, yet much of the material was unnecessary, such as the reunion between the three Kahn kids. Sure, it's nice they got to know each other, but necessary? I think not. My Architect was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. It lost out to The Fog of War. It's easy to see why it lost, too.

My rating: 5/10

Not Rated.

The problem with this film is also its most interesting asset -- the filmmaker. The film sheds little light on Louis Kahn's character or his architectural abilities, and it says basically nothing about architecture whatsoever, so if you are looking for a film about architecture, move along.

Beyond a great number of shots of Lou's sometimes beautiful, sometimes unpleasant buildings, this film is not about architecture.

What it is about, and what it excels in portraying, is a man's search for a father he lost in his youth and with whose ghost he has not yet made peace. Nathaniel Kahn has not made himself a very likable character, and for that I suppose one must respect him. He wavers between cloying innocence and childish sullenness and smugness. I think especially of his near falling-out with his mother. He comes across as downright cruel in not allowing his mother her idealizations and delusions about Lou's intentions toward her. Watching this film, the viewer does see the damage losing a parent does to a young child. Nathaniel is stunted and boyish, and sweet in an altogether unlikeable way. The Nathaniel we are given in this movie haunted by his father and his inability to understand him or to resolve his feelings toward him.

Little Kahn does have a number of interesting interviews with the people who knew his father; it's an interesting study of how greatly people are affected by a single person, how disparate their recollections of the person are, and also, how similar they sometimes are too. Apart from a few biographical facts, this film could have been about anyone who was greatly loved and deeply complicated (i.e., about a quarter of the people most of us know). Did it need to be about Lou Kahn to succeed? No.

Louis Khan was one of the most influential architects of our time, and this film speaks volumes about how little everyone really knew. His son's desire to find out who, and more importantly what he was is moving, and emotional.

This film captures the spirit of what architecture is really about, what good design is, and the emotional price that is paid for it. Equally haunting is the sound track. If you see the film, and then listen to the sound track you can revisit the film simply by listening. As a practicing architect of over 30 years, my heart ached and rejoiced over the film and its very straight forward, albeit emotional honesty and sincerity.

I had the honor of seeing this film previewed in Chicago at the National Convention of the American Institute of Architects. The film was introduced by Daniel, and he was kind enough to do a question and answer session afterward. During the entire presentation of the film, not a sound, not a cough, not one distraction took place. The entire audience sat mesmerized, and the real treat, was Daniel's mother was present during the showing of the film.

I will always remember the film, and play it over constantly in my mind every time I listen to the soundtrack...

Lois Kahn had scars from being burned as a child, so his deliberate school tardiness helped him avoid ridicule yet the way he appeared when he walked was inconsistent with a man feeling inferior. The inconsistencies in Kahn's life were abundant. "Louis Kahn My Architect" is a documentary found with some hunting on youtube, because the many excerpts vids with the same title make the full documentary an unlikely first click. It begins with the surviving illegitimate son reading the late architect's obituary on fiche, which is a symbolic scene. In addition to opening with the man credited for making the film as a product of old-fashioned thorough research it also shows a man under credited for being the late architect's son who, today, is largely under credited for his architectural achievements. Dear kind readers: Declaring, "boring" and clicking beyond is the most common reaction to this movie -- it's not a blockbuster. If you want to give yourself hope of finding the KO-emotional punch, then look for the documentarian's image reflected in the glass as he scans fiche on the projector. Sincerely, Tom Doody. It's a magical film-making moment at the start of a film Hana and I have seen to the end three times. Hana and I have plans to visit Salk Institute on California's Pacific Coast. Why? Because it's more practical than a visit to the Capital of Bangladesh. Kahn's life was filled with inconsistency, and one of those inconsistencies produced Nathaniel Kahn who survived the late architect, lived to make this film, and Nathaniel lives today. With this film he has unearthed some deep-seated emotion, and exposes it. The surviving son generates scenes of emotional awkwardness, which are tortuous. It's ironic how the awkward scenes are self inflicted, and not the work of manipulative pop media trying to expose dark moments of celebrities. The brilliance of the film is how the documentarian's emotion becomes central to the film without distracting his viewers from the subject. Alternatively his emotion illuminates his father's achievements. Like all great men, Louis Kahn was a great man -- sort of.

Anyone interested in modern architecture should see this film.

It's rare to get behind the facade of an architect's work and learn more about the person.

This documentary does it in a beautiful way, mixing a reverence for his work with a sincere exploration of the man himself--by his own son.

The film combines the usual biographical information, with an unusually personal insight and helps give you a new view, and appreciation for architect Louis Kahn's work.

Kahn clearly had a profound effect on modern architecture. It's fascinating to hear his peers, giants of architecture, talk about him in spiritual, as well as physical terms.

The entire film is deeply emotional, culminating in the last scene, set at Kahn's last and largest work, the massive Parliament complex in Bangladesh. People don't talk about this architect as a "form-maker," but as someone who understood the spirit of a place and made it concrete.

It's really beautiful.