Film about a father who- a response by Aditi Bhande

I just finished watching the film and the word ‘immense’ is flashing in my head. The film is immense in the time period in which it was shot- I guess something done over such a long time gives us a peek into the complexity and layered-ness of life…it’s like beginning to see that complexity mirrored back at me as a viewer. We are socially conditioned to look at things as black and white- a sharp distinction…but this film being so personal to Lynne and her life experience…doesn’t give any easy answers, no singular emotion to settle into either. It’s difficult to put into words the mix bag of emotions but I can categorise them as hurt, abandonment, pain, anger, wanting to understand but not really being able to understand and yet making space for the person to be themselves, readjusting expectations, helping others do the same in some way, watching loved ones go through pain and hurt and neglect and not being able to do much beyond a point.

The most difficult part for me was when Mr. Sachs, Sr. doesn’t want to engage with the questions Lynne Sachs asks of him. It feels all too familiar in a way of wanting to engage with one’s father and being shut out. It is strength giving and heart warming to see such a beauty as this film to emerge from this layered, difficult, complex beyond measure experience come to life.

The form and image making is informed by this emotional world of the filmmaker…the way the image is hazy, spinning, the television static images I was able to feel on my skin... I don’t think the filmmaker was trying to say anything in particular…I mean like a pointed message but that it’s a meditation and attempt to comprehend this experience she had in her life.

The film is reminding me of Le Joli Mai by Chris Marker and Pierre L’homme and Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouche in the sense of cine-therapy where some of the people they spoke to had a cathartic experience but in Film about a father who it’s the filmmaker having a cathartic experience I feel. Brings back the whole outside looking in, inside looking out point.

The film makes me wonder again about the idea of family and what makes a family- questions me and my peers grapple with too…in the sense of this idea of the great Indian family where everyone is together and choose to stick together despite the insides of the establishment/institution being rotten…so much generational trauma, so much suffering wrt mental health…yet all of it goes unspoken. We often speak of a chosen family of friends in this context. It takes a lot of courage to face up to it and speak about it too…so, this film taking its experimental form is what feels like courage- the choices to include images that aren’t necessarily understandable at once at least intellectually but can be felt deep within the body in the tightening of the chest and stomach, the tenseness in the shoulders- the acceptance brings relief but then again the complexity leaves one unsettled and also comfortable with being unsettled because it wouldn’t make sense in any other way.