text: Video Vault By Shawn K. Inlow<br /><br />My Architect: A Son's Journey 2003 - Nathaniel Kahn Not Rated: 116minutes Vault Rating: 7<br /><br />What a thing to be fatherless. "My Architect: A Son's Journey" follows Philadelphia filmmaker, Nathaniel Kahn, as he desperately seeks answers from his father, the renowned architect, Louis I. Kahn, dead these 30 years.<br /><br />Louis Kahn died in a train station in 1974 and left behind more than one family. The funeral service, when the filmmaker was just a boy, was, shall we say, an unpleasant surprise.<br /><br />We find that Nathaniel only knew his father en passant, from his sporadic visits with his mother, whom, we are told, he loved deeply. This movie is about a boy seeking his father and perhaps himself by visiting his work, as if the magnificent structures hold some secret. <br /><br />To be sure, Louis Kahn was a gifted architect, but "architect" is a cold word. The man was a sculptor on a grand scale who spoke of his craft in airy terms of silence and art.<br /><br />Among his notable works, explored lovingly in the film, are the Salk Institute (1965), The Kimball Art Museum (1972) and the monumental capitol complex in Bangladesh (1983). The portion of the film where Nathaniel first visits Dhaka, Bangladesh, finds the work, but not the man.<br /><br />The film benefits greatly from having much footage of the very public man as he worked in New York City and as a professor at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. Many of Khan's contemporaries and collaborators also help flesh out the filmmaker's ghost- father.<br /><br />Even so, the viewer seems not to come to a particularly satisfying place. The answers Nathaniel Khan is looking for seem hollow. Not good enough.<br /><br />In scenes where the director meets with his half sisters, both from different mothers, one can feel the tensions of the years, the slights and hurts. One might expect them to burst into anger, but only the camera saves them from hostilities. Each of these children has visibly lost something.<br /><br />It might be pointed out that Khan, who seemed a driven perfectionist, never became rich. Instead, he became noteworthy. It was as if he sacrificed his family for his art. This is a crushingly sad and great thing.<br /><br />April 28, 2005