My Architect
Dir.: Nathaniel Kahn
NR, 116 min.
Opening Friday at the Belcourt
The Academy Award-nominated documentary My Architect opens with its creator, Nathaniel Kahn, scanning through microfiche for the obituary of his father, Louis Kahn—an article that doesn’t mention Nathaniel, because the elder Kahn fathered his son out of wedlock. The noted architect had two daughters as well, from two other mothers (only one of whom he married). Kahn designed some of the most impressive buildings the world has seen, but when he was asked about his choice of career and he noted “how accidental our existences are,” the comment could double as an apology.
My Architect follows Nathaniel Kahn as he endeavors to get to know his late father by visiting buildings and talking to his father’s friends, colleagues and contractors. The movie risks becoming maudlin—as when Nathaniel rollerblades through the courtyard of the Kahn-designed Salk Institute while Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” plays on the soundtrack—and the director has a habit of needling his interview subjects with clumsy questions that often just restate what the interviewee has already said. But his methods are effective at getting people to speak their minds. His bald emotional neediness seems to inspire a willingness to help.
Whenever My Architect verges on excessive self-indulgence, the director has the good sense to cut back to the architecture. Louis Kahn preferred simple structures ornamented with large, open, evenly bisected shapes; he disliked the glass boxes and forced angles of modernist design, and imagined instead timeless structures in the spirit of the ancient world. After decades of failure and blown commissions, Kahn Finally began to exert an influence worldwide just before his death. In the documentary, Philip Johnson calls him “a real artist,” while I.M. Pei shrugs off his own success by saying of Kahn, “three or four masterpieces are more important than 50 or 60 buildings.”
At the same time, being “a real artist” meant that Kahn lacked discipline and often acted on momentary whims, both on the job and off. My Architect asks whether the enduring legacy of art justiFies the mess that was made in its creation—and it makes the question personal. Part of the Film’s charm is watching Nathaniel Kahn have his little family reunions, with the very real blend of awkwardness and warmth that comes from meeting people who share secondhand anecdotes and a little DNA. The director tries his best not to act too bruised, but it’s clear that a large part of him wants to hurt—to give his father’s sacriFice a living, bleeding representation.
My Architect has been structured carefully and surprisingly artfully, given that it comes from a First-time Filmmaker. Far from a strict biography, the documentary teases out Louis Kahn’s story over the two-hour running time, breaking frequently for the son’s reflections and for lengthy studies of the buildings. The architectural wonders mount, peaking at the end: First with the Kimbell Museum in Forth Worth (where the ceilings are as impressive as the paintings) and then with jaw-dropping government complexes in India and Bangladesh. Away from the compromise of stateside commissions, Kahn was free to realize his vision of public meeting spaces so inspiring that they make people behave better.
Meanwhile, back at home, the late Kahn’s countrymen tromp through his hospitals and libraries, and a few even complain to the junior Kahn that they think the buildings are too old-fashioned. Along those same lines, some may Find My Architect too square, with its classical storytelling construction and big beating heart. But the Film is as much a work of public-spirited generosity as any well-manicured ofFice park. Nathaniel Kahn pushes and prods and allows himself to look nebbishy in order to aid our understanding of a man who fussed over every last rivet of his construction projects, but couldn’t build a house for himself or for those who loved him.
