Tell Them Who You Are

Given the subject matter this could have been a great documentary. Instead it looks like a hap hazard home movie. Mark Wexler totally lost control of the subject -- his father. You get a real sense of who Haskell Wexler is, pretty much of a jerk. He gets thrown off of a film, One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest, and he thinks it is because the FBI interfered or threatened the producers. This is ridiculous. He sounds like a total pain in the ass to work with, which is why he was fired from the film. No less than Elia Kazan concedes he is brilliant, but he would never work with him again. Mark's documentary of his father is all over the place, very incoherent, seems to go nowhere. Compare it to My Father the Architect that came out about two years ago and it comes up lacking.

The title references a story recalled by Wexler junior and is a well chosen one as perhaps the story is a small illustration of the relationship between the success father and his son. I came this film because I recognised Wexler from Medium Cool and the Making Of film I saw recently, but I was even more interested when I realised quite how many famous films I had seen where he had been the cinematographer. I, like many others, thought "here is an interesting man and hopefully a good documentary". Sadly it isn't – or at least, not in the way that I hoped it would be.

Mostly we hear little of Wexler the filmmaker and even as a man, the film is unable to really bring out the person so much as just seeing him being grumpy and deliberately difficult. Maybe this is who he is, but even if this is true the film doesn't really capture this very well or even structure it – it just happens as a side-effect of nothing else working. At times (most notably in the early stages) the scenes where Haskell directs over the top of his son Mark offered interest because I thought it would be a good way where the film could get him talking about the craft and the film would be strong on that. Although this happens in miniature here and there, it just happens and doesn't seem to be something deliberate that is followed up on and the potential in these scenes are never realised.

Mark has done lots of interviews for this film but few are used for more than a snippet here and there. Instead we get the majority of the film depicting the relationship between father and son as they argue and Haskell continually forces his will onto Mark. In this way it is interesting because, regardless of who the person is (and in this area it doesn't really matter that the father is a famous cinematographer) the unspoken story offers potential. Some have said that the way Haskell hijacks the film makes it a mess and a failure – but I disagree. The mess came in the editing suite and the failure is the failure to pull all these "real" moments into a structure where they are the film. Instead these moments again just happen and the inability to harness them and make them in to a film is what frustrated me – not the fact that they happened.

However without this happening, it did leave me agreeing with several others who question the value of the film. It doesn't do a good job looking at Haskell's career; nor does it do a good job looking at him as a man; nor does it do a good job of looking at the craft of the cinematographer; nor does it manage to structure a portrait of a father and son relationship. So what does it manage to do? Well, the truth is, a small amount of each of these but nothing in sufficient quantity or quality to be of real value. Intermittently interesting but mostly it is a messy, out-of-control affair with limited value.

This documentary will engage you on several levels -- it is a brilliant brief on one of film's greatest cinematographers (Haskell Wexler), a great behind the scenes look at movie-making, and

a moving study of a son trying to come to terms with his famous -- and famously difficult -- father.

Many interesting insights from marquee actors and directors (but with James Lipton nowhere in sight!). While industry insiders will surely love it, it is equally appealing to "civilian" filmgoers.

Director Mark Wexler bravely shows his own foibles as well as those of his father. Many great telling moments.

As I write these comments (on 5-14-05) this film has only a 6.7/10 user rating on its IMDb page. That is such a disgrace. It is easily a 10 in my book. Just a terrific piece of work. And what a tribute to Mark Wexler that he was able to tell such a remarkably candid tale of he and his father's troubled relationship without pulling any punches. Also, the inherent irony in watching this tremendous documentary, is that throughout it, Haskell Wexler, his prolific and highly critical father, is condemning Mark for many of his film-making choices. The scene where Mark pleads with his father to please step out on the balcony to conduct the interview so he can frame him with the cityscape of San Francisco in the background is utterly tragic. It is a microcosm of their entire relationship. The son both literally and figuratively trying to step out of the shadows, those in that little hotel room and those cast by his legendary father. Mark Wexler should be proud and resolute in the knowledge that he is not only out of that formidable shadow, he is casting quite a shadow of his own with this wonderful film.

I grew up in Chicago and was 18 years old when the riots broke out there during the 1968 Democratic Convention. I didn't go down there because my Chicago Democrat father would have thrown me out of the house if I had gotten involved. So I saw the riots going on 8 miles from house on TV, while Haskell Wexler was down in the streets making a film about how the media was shaping my beliefs about the situation. I think that about sums up my "personal" relationship to Haskell Wexler. When I saw the film Medium Cool, my mind was altered forever. I eventually got a doctorate in communications research and I teach young people about the influence of media in their world and about how they can use the media to change the world.

I sense that the mediocre rating of this film may be due to the fact that people could miss the absolute perfect symmetry of this film. They fail to see how the father forces the son into cinema verite mode (far away from the controlled format of the Smithsonian type of documentary that Mark was used to) and how the son accepts this and creates a film that the father can sign off on. There is a lot of truth in this film. Even if Mark's values do not mirror Haskell's, he is unafraid to expose his own feelings. And I get a sense that Haskell's influence on his son is more profound than he realizes through much of the film. Also, coming from my own lefty perspective, I found the exploration of a life well lived to be inspirational. This film has just surfaced on Sundance Channel in 2006 and if you are interested in finding some of the connecting threads in Haskell's life or are the sort of man who cried watching "Field of Dreams," it's well worth the watch.