Metacritic-Rezensionen

Obviously a profoundly personal film, but it's also a smartly conducted tour through the world of building and design that Kahn towered over during the most successful phases of his career.

This fascinating portrait of an eccentric visionary and his chaotic triple family life is an accomplished, enormously satisfying non-fiction work.

An inspired homage to his father's work, and a bracing, bittersweet testament of filial love mixed with pain and compassion.

The result is an immensely enjoyable portrait of a strange-looking, non-comforming genius who loved women as much as designing masterpieces but was never able to commit to them. In other words: great architect, lousy family man.

The son is obsessive and petulant, punishing and self-pitying, and by the time he gets to a talk with his hurt old mother, we understand why.

Tinged with sorrow, compassion, forgiveness and, ultimately, love. More than 25 years after his father's death, Nathaniel visits his father's architectural works and speaks to the people who knew him.

The son's search is one of three strands of a story that the movie weaves into a meticulously structured portrait of a complicated man who remains elusive even after key elements of the puzzle have been pieced together.

Touring his father's magnificent structures, Nathaniel shows signs of coming around to his mother's point of view, and of realizing that Kahn's towering contributions to art and humanity perhaps exceed (if not altogether excuse) his shortcomings as a father, a husband, and a lover.

Apparently Louis Kahn was not much of a father, raconteur or businessman. But he was a genius, and he left his mark on all the people whose lives he touched.

This touching documentary is many things at once: a fascinating biography, a gorgeously shot travelogue, a provocative disquisition on the relevance of architecture and, above all, the record of a son's poignant search for a father.