Film About a Father Who

Jagged and disorderly, confounding and charming and sometimes irritating - just like the man at its center.

[A] brisk, prismatic and richly psychodramatic family portrait...

Throughout, Lynne Sachs undercuts the image of the past as simpler or more stable than the present.

A documentary that is formidable in its candour and ambition, but which many viewers may find frustratingly elusive in its eschewal of a more conventional expository style.

It's a deeply personal work of biography (via autobiography), of course. One that may perhaps mystify some viewers...

Sachs presents multiple perspectives by liberally jumping backwards and forwards in time, capturing Ira at different ages and points in his life. In doing so, the film doesn't draw attention to how he changes so much as what stays the same.

Builds up a fragmented picture of a complex individual.

Both Lynne and we are perhaps no closer to understanding Ira Sr. by film's end, but we at least know him as his children do and...that's nothing short of miraculous.

She may not have unlocked the secret of her father's heart, but the attempt reveals touching, humorous and painful insights about what we think a father is and what he should be.

This gripping documentary ... speaks its truth and speaks it beautifully. Let it be heard.