My Father, the Genius: Blueprint for family healing

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***

We could create a subgenre of documentaries that are about the filmmaker's estranged, or strange, relationship with their artist father - Tell Them Who You Are, Mark Wexler's film about his father, famed cinematographer Haskell, not to mention the superior My Architect, come to mind - but Lucia Small's unsettling little film My Father, the Genius, winner of the documentary jury prize at 2002's Slamdance Film Festival, is even more personal than most. What at first seems like a gentle salute to the man's undeniable talents and eccentricities gradually becomes something more interesting, and disturbing.

"I feel so bad about myself. Every minute I could be doing something for the world and I'm not," architect Glen Small says at the film's beginning, summarizing neatly what may have lead him to live a life aloof from his family in the quest for fame. He's not famous, which is in part the impetus for this film, to document his life's work and his own proclamation that he's a genius, even if only a few others would agree. (The title could be a little facetious.) He asks his daughter Lucia to write his bio - which she then decides would be better served as a film. But in the narration she wonders aloud, "Why me?" She has other sisters closer to him, and has been estranged from him for years. She didn't know much about his work let alone architecture, so she realizes what we do early on, that the film can become her own exploration of who he really is.

Small's certainly an odd bird - with his helmet of hair and rambling insights - but his designs are most impressive and he really was one of the first "Green" architects. If he isn't a "genius," the film does make pretty clear his work deserves to be known and respected. His life obsession was a celebrated design for a "Biomorphic Biosphere" - the quest to design the perfect city to solve the ecological problems of the world (and not to be confused with the Biosphere II) which the filmmaker has felt jealous of because over the years he's showed more interest in it than in her.

As noted in the film, Frank Lloyd Wright, too, acknowledged that he liked architecture more than he liked his children, and Small was no different. Through an often uncomfortably frank series of interviews with those who have known him - from his ex-wives to family, friends, colleagues, even rivals - we get a perspective on Small that almost makes you feel a little sorry for him. Then home movies further reflect his disassociation with his personal life - he films landscapes, nature and buildings, but rarely his children. The fact that he isn't a famous person adds to the discomfort here, as he is depicted bluntly, as if his skin was showing inside out. Lucia Small also weaves in old video and film footage of Glen in action, including at a couple of architectural panels in which he further alienated himself from his peers with his blunt candor.

He has admitted problems with women - he can't relate to them and they bother him - and it's buildings and designs he really coos over - near the end of the film he literally makes the choice clear. ("He's difficult but he's a genius," says a female colleague. "No," disagrees his ex-wife, Lucia's mother. )

To her credit Lucia Small manages to explore their relationship while being aware of her own subjectivity, which leads her to explore his standing in the architectural world among other people in that world. My Father, the Genius is also an interesting and rare document about the challenges of being a modern architect, as well - of being an artist who must remain grounded, and deal with dissatisfied clients, while trying to create work that has an impact on the world.

Some of the back and forth between Glen and his ex-wife, detailing how they separated, their differences, gets a little old after awhile - or it feels no different than hearing your own divorced parents criticize each other - uncomfortably personal without being all that compelling. The film certainly doesn't have a high budget either - it's shot on digital video, but that fits the personal nature of it all. And by the end, in a touching answering machine, he seems to have arrived at a point of maturation of poignant realization on what he'd missed and what he now holds dear.