Son-father movie a treat for architecture buffs

By Benjamin Forgey
Washington Post

The National Assembly building in Bangladesh was one of Louis I. Kahn's masterpieces. "My Architect: A Son's Journey" is Nathaniel Kahn's story about his effort to connect with his powerful father. Image from "My Architect: A Son's Journey" 'My Architect: A Son's Journey' Not rated; contains no potentially offensive images 116 minutes

For architecture aficionados, then, the opportunity to see such a film on the large screen is a treat — and a surprise. But there it is: "My Architect: A Son's Journey," Nathaniel Kahn's new film about his father, the great Louis I. Kahn. It is a touching search for identity, a son's painstaking and sometimes painful effort to connect with a powerful, mysterious father.

Louis Kahn was one of the 20th century's greats. In just a handful of major, memorable buildings, all conceived in the past two decades of his life, he helped lay the foundation for the remarkable rebirth of modern architecture we are experiencing today.

Kahn was idolized during his lifetime. He was a mystic, a mesmerizing teacher and an unforgettable presence. A little man with a scarred face (from a childhood burn) and a memorably unkempt silvery pate, he spoke to packed houses wherever he went.

But, like many a famous father — and, for that matter, like many a creative egotist — Kahn was a distant dad. Nathaniel was 11 in 1974 when Louis died of a heart attack at 73, leaving the boy with questions he could not put to rest even after becoming a man. This film is the poignant result.

The circumstances of Louis Kahn's death were strange. He was famous, busy and practically penniless. He traveled a lot for work, but mostly on his own. He died of heart failure in the restroom of Penn Station in New York after a solo trip to Bangladesh, where he was following the construction of the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, one of his masterpieces. Because he had scratched off the address on his passport — and why in the world did he do that? — his body lay unidentified for three days in a Manhattan morgue.

For Nathaniel, who never understood why he had seen his father only once a week or so throughout his 11 years, the funeral was more than the usual terrible shock: It was there that he first met his half-sisters and their mothers. Louis had fathered not only a daughter with his wife of 46 years but another with a professional associate in the 1950s. Another professional colleague was Nathaniel's mother; the boy, born in 1953, was the youngest of the children. The three families, if that is the word, lived in relatively close proximity in Philadelphia, though it's unclear from the film exactly who among them knew what about this complicated situation.

Nathaniel Kahn's approach to his subject is at once laconic and layered. He doesn't say much, but he asks a lot of questions. We follow him as he visits his half-sisters and his father's friends and colleagues, as well as the famous architects (including Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Moshe Safdie and Frank Gehry) influenced by Louis Kahn's work. Along the way, we are treated to extended looks at most of Kahn's best buildings.

It's a slow journey, maybe a little too slow for some. But I was hooked, and not just because I'm a longtime admirer of Kahn. The son-father story is compelling on its own, and the people involved do indeed have pointed, interesting and sometimes contradictory things to say.

There are excruciating moments, such as when Nathaniel, talking to one of Louis' fellow architects, learns that his dad used to spend cheerful Christmases with the man's family. Nathaniel doesn't comment, but afterward, he takes a skateboard for a looping run on the stone plaza of the Salk Institute in California, one of his father's triumphant achievements.

This is a bittersweet story, no question. But to the son's great credit, what emerges from his patient investigation is a remarkably rich, even sympathetic, portrait of the father. And, almost as lagniappe, are all those splendid images of the father's architecture.

"My Architect: A Son's Journey" makes its Honolulu debut at the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Academy of Arts today. Screenings are at 7:30 p.m. today, Saturday and Tuesday; 1:30 p.m. Sunday; 1 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; and 4 p.m. Jan. 25. Admission is $5 general, $3 museum members. 532-8768.

The film also will be screened at 6:30 p.m. May 5 at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa School of Architecture Auditorium (2410 Campus Road, second floor), with a reception at 5:30 p.m. It's the final film in the Architecture Cinema Series, launched in August. Admission is $4.