Film About a Father Who
DeFacto Film Reviews
January 27, 2021
By Robert Joseph Butler
http://defactofilmreviews.com/film-about-a-fatherwho
Families hold many complexities and dysfunctions. Stories are often passed on from person to person, and many times it leads to siblings, mothers, fathers, and other members to feel bitter, but it can also be reconciled and even distorted. Family secrets are often passed down from person to person, and many times the truth can create adversities and hardships. Lynne Sachs compelling documentary, “Film About a Father Who,” is evidently about her father, Ira Sachs Sr. (not to be confused with the talented Independent filmmaker), who’s still alive. An engaging and personal documentary, it is told through artful 8mm and home video footage along with observational footage and Lynne narrating her own documentary, which in part makes it a redemptive framework. Can Lynne Sachs come to terms with the man her father really is?
Sach’s father Ira is a very charming and easygoing man, a semi-successful entrepreneur that presents himself more as a “hippie businessman.” Ira has long hair, a handlebar mustache, and almost looks like a character out of a Wes Anderson film. We see archival footage of him promoting cellphones in the early 90s at ski resorts. He’s also a real estate developer who explains how cell phones have made his life much more accessible for his business deals. During his off time he often wears Hawaiian shirts, loves to go skiing in Utah, and also enjoys traveling. The images of this relaxed and likeable man are deceptive as Lynne Sachs points out how much damage he has generated for the women and children due to his endless affairs that led to him impregnating five different women who all had their children out of wedlock.
In the beginning of the documentary, the film is very warm and inviting, which almost plays out like a counterpart to something like “Dick Johnson is Dead”–which was last year’s documentary also about father’s and daughters reconnecting and making a documentary together. Throughout Ira’s life he had many affairs with many different women, withheld information about who he really was, and deceived many other women who led to a lot of agony and heartbreak that destroyed many livelihoods.
In many ways, Sach’s film reminded me of Andrew Jarecki 2003 documentary masterpiece “Capturing the Friedman’s” because just as Jarecki did in that masterwork, Sachs structures the documentary like a procedural or investigation in a way. She focuses on his character, his motivations, manipulations, and the adversities his actions created. This leads Sachs back to using scratchy home movies that were shot during her childhood and teenage years, and we get recent footage of Lynne’s half-brothers and sisters from different mothers who are introduced later in the film. It also features Sachs drilling her father over his selfish and self-destructive behaviors as she contemplates and narrates the narrative looking for traits or signs in earlier footage of what led to his behavior. Sachs is asking the audience if redemption and forgiveness can go when it comes to family, how much mercy can we give after years of so much dishonesty.
In the beginning of the documentary, the film is very warm and inviting, which almost plays out like a counterpart to something like “Dick Johnson is Dead”–which was last year’s documentary also about father’s and daughters reconnecting and making a documentary together. Throughout Ira’s life he had many affairs with many different women, withheld information about who he really was, and deceived many other women who led to a lot of agony and heartbreak that destroyed many livelihoods.
In many ways, Sach’s film reminded me of Andrew Jarecki 2003 documentary masterpiece “Capturing the Friedman’s” because just as Jarecki did in that masterwork, Sachs structures the documentary like a procedural or investigation in a way. She focuses on his character, his motivations, manipulations, and the adversities his actions created. This leads Sachs back to using scratchy home movies that were shot during her childhood and teenage years, and we get recent footage of Lynne’s half-brothers and sisters from different mothers who are introduced later in the film. It also features Sachs drilling her father over his selfish and self-destructive behaviors as she contemplates and narrates the narrative looking for traits or signs in earlier footage of what led to his behavior. Sachs is asking the audience if redemption and forgiveness can go when it comes to family, how much mercy can we give after years of so much dishonesty.
While Sachs could have dived even deeper in the interviews, especially with an interview involving her siblings, it’s the home video imagery that resonates the most, which has scratches, washed out colors, and wintry landscapes. If anything the footage feels abstract and metaphorical, as memories and even images can deceive our perceptions of how things really are beneath the surface. The opening of the film has the warm and cozy inviting moments, where we see a kind man and backgrounds that symbolizes tranquility, only for the footage to also look dated and worn out that matches the revelations of the family’s past that echoes a collection of semi-deceptive and exhausted memories. To her advantage, Sach utilizes her home footage to her complete advantage that makes it feel like washed out memories that are slipping away. She also uses 16mm in interviews with close family members, including one with her Grandmother. Formally experimental for a documentary, the wide range of aesthetics are quite reflexive in Sachs own commentary about the inconsistency of memory, and how the movie image is every bit as deceptive. If anything, this documentary shares a lot of the same ideas of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” which also uses commentary on the discrepancies of the image.
Sachs’ vision should be commended and embraced for what she’s doing not only on a technical level, but also on a personal level. Ultimately, Ira’s reckless attitude towards relationships with women has generated a lot of internal trauma and hardships for Sachs and her fellow siblings, as well as to the women he was involved with. The film is a reminder on the importance of documentary filmmaking, how it’s important to record and how the visual medium can capture and reflect the state of what is going on. We never know what we record could later surface into something cohesive and coherent, and even bring closure for the unexpected hidden revelations that can arise. If anything, all families should record because whatever we shoot at the moment can become the relics to finding redemption and salvation in bringing a family together.