51 Birch Street

After seeing the movie, I feel the father and the mother are both reasonable person, although not perfect at all. On the contrary, I don't like the author, and his two sisters.

Is a person's journal an accurate portrait of herself? No. Most of time people only write problems in her journal because she want to solve the problem. So a journal is always a more negative side of a person. In this movie, the author judge his mother's life by her journal. Not a wise choice.

The author's elder sister is so ugly, external and internal. First, she said her father's second marriage is "not fair" for her mother. Then, she said she doesn't love her mother. So, she don't love both father and mother. I doubt she love anybody in the world. Her face is so ugly, just a reflection of her heart. Through out the movie, I feel the author and his sisters are lack of love and respect to their parents. However, I feel the father are mother are very loving to their children, even the author try to portrait them as cold, deceitful person.

Watching this film caused quite an emotional reaction. This is what today's documentaries are all about. It's refreshing to watch something so personal, honest and real. Mr. Block's thoughts, opinions and disclosure are rarely seen these days and are incredibly well displayed here. It's a fine line to walk between personal truth and exploitation. This film treads very carefully and quite successfully.

One would think that learning about how a seemingly normal couple falls short of society's expectations would give birth to pessimism...but it doesn't. Quite the opposite: it made me feel good. I feel that I now know more about marriage...about women.

Definitely check this out, it'll make you think - exactly what a good documentary should be designed to do.

I saw this movie at the Philadelphia Film Festival today and enjoyed it overall. It is an interesting and adept analysis of the all-too-common revelation that our parent's marriage was more flawed and difficult than we originally imagined. In addition, this movie is an excellent example of process of discovering truths about our parent's lives after their death and the issues associated with that. However, i found the sound quality (recording and editing) to be relatively poor and annoying. *** It may very well have been related to the specific theater and projection conditions *** i am not a film maker / student or anything and claim no real understanding of the sound production process, but as a consumer, i found the audio portion of the movie distracting. Specifically, i heard very unpleasant lip smacking noises through out (especially one long interview with the younger sister) the film, and often the background noise level was higher in volume than people's voices (for example the scene when a small group was sorting through the mothers papers). has anyone else seen this movie, noticed anything about the sound... thanks

This is a really great film! It gets you thinking about your parents. How we all have fragile relationships we all have with them, unless we really make an effort to know who they are as people. And just as important, we should remember to open up and show them our real selves, not just who we think they want us to be. Definitely see this documentary! IMDb is making me write more text before they will post my comment, how odd. Usually online comments need to be short short, and here I am being asked to write more! Well I went to see the film with my parents, I thought afterward they would want to talk about their parents, but my dad kept wanting to talk about himself and things in his life he feels he screwed up, which was unusual, my dad is not a reticent man, but I was surprised that he wanted to talk about mistakes he thinks he made. Mike and Kitty came to the film to do a Q & A and there was a hilarious moment afterward when my dad was talking with Mike, while my mom spoke with Kitty! Really just disregard my last few sentences to pad this comment, and just remember '51 Birch Street,' go see it!

For those who still prefer films focusing on human relationships, 51 Birch Street is a must see.

By training the spotlight on his own family, Block covers terrain that is off-limits for most filmmakers. He explores a common but often unspoken family dynamic and does so without resorting to hyperbole or sensationalism. In fact, the film is deceptively low key at the outset.

In addition to providing a probing look at one family - and, by extension, every family - Block has also chronicled a very specific period in recent history. I don't know if this was intentional, but unavoidable due to archival content.

Highly recommended.