Following Sean

Back in 1969, Ralph Arlyck made a small film about a neighbor boy named Sean. At the time, the film gained some notoriety and audiences were curious what would one day happen to this boy since he grew up in a Haight-Ashbury home with practically no structure or guidance. At four, he was walking the streets, taking pot and being his own boss.

FOLLOWING SEAN is ostensibly a follow-up film in which Arlyck re-establishes contact with Sean and follows him in his adult years. However, Arlyck never really maintains this clear focus--often diverging into interviews and visits with Sean's extended family as well as Arlyck's. Because of this, the film seems, at times, less of a documentary or attempt to show cause and effect and more a long string of home movies strung together. This isn't all bad, as you do really get to know and care about the characters. However, if your goal is to really make a definitive statement on how these 60s "do as you please" morals affected them in later years, this isn't quite so clear--though there is a pattern, to a degree, of failed relationships--though this, unfortunately, would also mirror recent trends on marriage overall. So you are left wondering just how good or bad this odd childhood was long term--and the film kept me wondering. I did enjoy it--I'm just not sure what it all meant in regard to Sean, but it did have a lot to say about the tenuousness of relationships in general.

That old line about "If you remember the 60's you weren't there" doesn't apply to people with cameras.

This is much more than a documentary about a boy born to hippies in the Haight in the 1960's. It's about the four generations that telescope around him, before and after. It's about family.

It's also about the choices that people make, the prices they pay, and the successes that have or don't have. It's also a slice of American life of which we could use a whole lot more. The scene of Ralph's parents' friends (all of them well into old age) sitting around, reminiscing and giggling about being Communists in upstate New York is totally priceless.

And the enduring hope of young people who gleefully plunge into marriage and families is what makes the world go around.

Most of the newspaper reviews for this film were ho-hum, and one was downright negative. Don't believe them, this film's a keeper.

I stumbled upon this film on Netflix while perusing the documentary section and I'm very glad I did. This was very moving and thoughtful film, the filmmaker weaves his own life story into that of the subject, who was a precocious four year old boy in the Haight Ashbury sixties and now an adult trying to figure out his own place in the world. A very quiet meditation on life, relationships, the impermanence of everything we think will last forever. It was like watching years fly by in the blink of an eye, which in a way they actually do, both beautiful and depressing. Possibly not for everyones taste but as someone who didn't live in the sixties or have anything to do with those times it was still a fascinating peak into life at the time and the people who lived during that era.

This movie should be called following Ralph. The director/narrator does include quite a bit of Sean, but it really becomes a means to discuss himself. I don't think this is a narcissistic move as much as an attempt to make a full length documentary out of some very intriguing and very short footage of a young Sean. The documentary is based around the director's old footage which is somewhat interesting, but it stretches thin when the director tries to pull it out into a full length.

The premise is also intriguing. After seeing the footage of a young Sean I was very interested to find out who he had become as a man. And who he has become defeats expectations, not in such an uplifting way as surprising.

I love a good documentary, especially one that is a character study. But in the modern vein of Michael Moore documentaries, the filmmaker too often becomes the film, or at least the voice that tells you what to think or how to feel about the subject matter. And this documentary makes those mistakes to the point that the subject isn't exactly followed as much as it meanders. If you haven't seen all of the Maysles brothers documentaries, watch those, see how a real documentary is made... and then maybe, consider seeing this.

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!