Quick Movie Review: My Architect

[John Cole]

Saw it the other night (and dragged along Rick, too). Louis Kahn's son, Nathaniel (whose mother Kahn never married), sets out in search of his father through an examination of his buildings and through interviews with his father's aquantainces and friends, among them I.M. Pei, Robert Stern, and Philip Johnson. The film combines interviews, archival footage, and some glorious shots of his father's work--many using time lapse photograph--to present a fascinating look at a true iconoclast. Nathaniel also interviews his mother and aunts, and he sketches out a family portrait at the same time.

Perhaps the most moving scene, for me, occurs at the end of the film when Nathniel interviews an architect in Bangladesh, for which Kahn had designed the Capitol. The archtect says the Louis wasn't a political man, but he brought freedom and democracy, with his building, to his country. Another highlight is Nathaniel freewheeling on roller blades outside the Salk Research building in La Jolla to Neil Young's "Long May You Run."

A very good movie.