Park City got a glimpse into the complicated personal life of a local legend Friday. The flamboyant developer and entrepreneur Ira Sachs Sr. is profiled in a documentary that premiered opening night of the Slamdance Film Festival.
It’s a fascinating probe into the mysteries of the human mind and heart.
“The music, orchestrated by Stephen Vitiello is note perfect. Whimsical when necessary, ominous at times, and occasionally inquisitive — the music always adds and never detracts.”
Like any memoir, this movie is heavily dependent on the audience connecting with the film’s subject for the narrative to work, and because of Sachs’s obvious passion for the story she is telling, the movie is mostly effective.
This film isn’t therefore about righting wrongs, but exposing facts Ira kept locked away until it either benefitted him or could no longer stay hidden.
What starts out as a typical look at father by a daughter slowly becomes something else as revelations about Sachs’ father begin to muddy the waters and change what she and others think of him. It quickly becomes clear that there are more than one way to see him.
I guess in filmmaking there’s a thin line between voyeurism and intimacy.
When I started making the film, I didn’t know what I was talking about. [Laughs] You can’t be on a mission about your own life. It’s not like writing a novel, and you know what the ending is going to be. I didn’t know that the last two years would go in the direction that it did. I just kept doing it.
So I kept collecting footage or shooting footage but not watching it. And then about two years ago I said, “I really have to start going through this.” I could see my dad getting older. But I’m getting older at exactly the same rate and so are you.
In conventional documentaries, you sit someone down and ask them questions and then they reflect and they deliver it back, as demanded. That wasn’t the way I was able to capture most of the material from my dad.
