My Architect (9/10)

Copyright © 2004 by Tony Medley

Louis I. Kahn died in the men’s restroom at New York City’s Penn Station in 1974. He was alone, bankrupt, and had erased his address from his passport so nobody knew whom to contact.

So what? So, Kahn was a world-renowned architect who led a secret triple life with a wife and daughter, a mistress (Anne Tyng) and daughter (Alexandra Tyng), and another mistress (Harriet Pattison) and son (Nathaniel Kahn). This is the filmed record of the quest of son, Nathaniel, to find out who his father was.

It’s a journey that takes the better part of two hours. We meet Kahn’s contemporaries, including I.M. Pei, his wife and both of his mistresses, all his children, and all his buildings. We also meet him through archival footage. It’s a fascinating trip.

Kahn was a workaholic who neglected his women and children for the benefit of his work, but he had no ambition to make money. He wanted to create art in the buildings he designed.

The only thing that disappointed me was that while Nathaniel, who wrote, produced, and directed this, asks his mother, Harriet, tough questions (which she answers), he refuses to answer the tough questions she asks him. I thought this was less than courageous on Nathaniel’s part. If he’s going to put his own mother through the ringer, and if she’s honest enough to answer his questions in front of the whole world, the least he owes her is to respond to her two questions. But all we get is her questions and silence. However, to give Nathaniel his due, he did put her questions in the film. He had to power to cut them and we never would have known about them.

Kahn is a true enigma. The victim of a horrible burning accident when he was three years old that left his face scarred for life, he apparently possessed enormous charm. Except for one man, everyone interviewed praises him, although most criticize his treatment of his family and the women in his life. Kahn’s reaction when his second mistress, Harriet, tells him she’s pregnant, was, “Oh, no! Not again!”

That one man is Ed Bacon, who emotionally defends his decision to terminate Kahn’s participation in the rebuilding of downtown Philadelphia in the 1960s. Kahn’s idea was to have everybody park their cars outside of downtown and walk into downtown. As strongly as Bacon makes his case, I wish they’d have done that in Los Angeles (I wish that GM hadn’t bought up our electric train system, the best in the world in the ‘40s, and ripped it out to replace it with freeways so they could sell cars and gasoline, too). Philadelphia could have had a new, modern city, but for Bacon, who accuses Kahn of having only aesthetics as a goal, at the expense of practicality. Today Kahn’s ideas look not only workable, but desirable.

This is a spellbinding, emotional journey. 

January 23, 2004

The End