My Architect

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.