Following Sean

At first I found it a bit predictable,style wise, sixties home movies ,hippies,the Haight, Sean as a little boy talking to the camera ,all cool,your basic documentary type film,I wasn't really that interested in meeting Sean,as an adult, there are so many other things going on. Really , before I knew it, I was well caught up into Sean,his family ,the film makers family and their intense ,admirable lives all around. There are some very poignant scenes that brought tears to my eyes,Sean and his Fathers relationship particularly. Sean is a great guy,kind of hard to read, maybe mixed up maybe not,Mr Arlyck has done an amazing ,deft job of pulling the viewer into this tale.My favorite type of film experience,right here.

This was a good film with some major flaws. I was drawn to the film because of its purported primary subject, depicted on the cover - Sean. I read the back-story, which serves as the premise for the new film, and assumed we'd be delving into the life of this compelling character.

While there were many satisfying tidbits throughout, we aren't introduced to 'modern-day' Sean until we're more than 20 minutes into the movie. This should serve as an indication of the film's primary flaw. Bottom line: For a film entitled, "Following Sean," we're not really given much time with the title character. We're left guessing about his true thoughts about his hippie upbringing, his parents' decision to allow him to experience said hippie culture unabated at such a young age, and many of the details of his adolescent years and early adulthood. We're given only fleeting glimpses of his parents, both in 1969 and 2005.

What the film fails to acknowledge is the basis for its own appeal - we're drawn in by that little child who is obviously in need of adequate parenting. What were his parents thinking? Why would they allow him to be filmed making references to using drugs at four years old? What sort of backlash did the film's release cause for them? Did it contribute to the breakup of their marriage? Do they wish they had done things differently? I never got the sense that the filmmaker got close enough to his subjects to truly answer any of these questions. Instead, we're given updates on Arlyck's life since the original film's release - almost in slideshow form at some points. It felt, at times, like getting a family update letter that had arrived at the wrong address. You take it all in on a curious level, while all the while realizing it wasn't really meant for your eyes.

We're also not given enough of the 15 minute original short. If we had known our subject, his parents, and even the filmmaker a little better, we could have invested in the updates on a deeper level.

That said, the film is nicely shot, and contains a great soundtrack. Its strongest suit is its title character. I only wish we'd gotten to know him a little better.

Stumbled across this gem on PBS the other night. I was initially spellbound by the storytelling ability of the narrator (Ralph Arlyck), but drawn in even further by the tapestry of lives involved. When we think of the 60's and early 70's, we think of Woodstock, hippies, free love, San Francisco, etc. What we don't often dwell on are the lives implicated in the thick of the hippie lifestyle. What lead to those lives? Who were the parents? Grandparents? What impact did this lifestyle have on the children? Grandchildren? Not a judgmental piece of film-making, but it does raise a lot of questions. And no, it doesn't offer a lot of answers. But does life? An amazing piece of film-making.

I saw _Following Sean_ this week in Paris with a friend who lived in San Francisco during the 60s, and we both loved the film. The documentarian's work is prodigious -- we were constantly amazed by the continuous progression of time: just when we thought we'd seen the latest of Sean and his family, another, more recent, slice of their lives emerged on screen. The documentarian wove the story of his own family into the film, and while at first I found the digressions slightly annoying (Sean and his family are so compelling that one wants to see more of them), at the end I decided his decision was correct, and that the study of three generations of his own family deepened the impact of the film.

I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in sociology, social psychology (especially concerning the effects of 60's freedom-loving childraising on their children), McCarthyism, the effects of aging, and in general the history of the United States over the last 50 years. Anyone who lived in Berkeley or San Francisco in the 60s or 70s will be fascinated! I was shocked to realize that _Following Sean_ has, apparently, not been screened yet in the Untied States. A distributor must be found!

I don't know if it was the mood I was in or what, but I just had a wonderful time with this movie. It's scope is epic. It covers 60 years of counter culture adventures big and small in 90 minutes. The film maker's whole life is here. The thing is decades in the making. We jump back and forth through space and time meeting a cast that runs the gambit from hero of the American Communist movement to capitalist Russian Trophy bride. FAR SUPERIOR to the similarly subjected over-hyped "Tarnation" of a few years ago. I guarantee you will like this movie. It's a great story told in a very cool way. A documentary that engages the way fictional narrative engages. This gets tossed around a lot in reviews but; It is a remarkable achievement.

Selah.