My Father and Me

In 'My Father and Me', Nick Broomfield has made a surprisingly warm and touching film, part autobiogrpahy, part family memoir, and part pure tribute to his dad Maurice, an outstanding (but for much of his life, essentially uncelebrated) photographer of industrial propaganda. Maurice, it seems, lived a full life, aided by two outstanding choice in marriage; not a perfect father, but not a bad one either. What comes across in this film is the portait of a man whose life was both more interesting than average, but extraordinary mostly in small ways; the story of a decidedly uncommon family, who nonetheless lived at the same sort of scale as most of the rest of us. Nick's ego, sometimes too obviously apparent in his films, is here replaced by a natural humilty and respect. This might not be his most attention-grabbing work, but it's one of his best.