True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

My Architect
The illegitimate son of a famous architect seeks the father he never
knew. The architect is Louis Kahn, who co-founded modernism – naked
concrete, glass walls, etc. Kahn was a late bloomer, an unemployed artist
who was 50 years old when, on his first trip to Rome, he had a revelation
of how to create an entirely new monumental style of architecture: make
it look like ruins from the future. Kahn was an elusive nomad, traveling
constantly and fathering three separate families, with three “wives,”
each of whom was weirdly (even delusionally) faithful to him. After a few
decades of sleepless striving to make great buildings, Kahn died bankrupt,
alone and unidentified in Penn Central Station, New York. His son
Nathan, whom he rarely saw, was only 11. Now an adult, Nathan sets out
to find out who his mysterious father really was by investigating the only
personal thing his father left behind – his buildings. In a very emotional
and satisfying climax that takes place in Dacca, Bangladesh of all places,
Nathan finds what he is looking for. At this same climax viewers see that
his father Louis really was as great an artist as his contemporaries believed.
Along the way in this odd family saga, you get a fabulous orientation
in modern architecture.
By Nathaniel Kahn
2003, 116 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
The son and father (right), and the father’s greatest work in
a government building in the capital of Bangladesh (above).
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