MONUMENT from page 45 was getting closer to my father." "Lou always said work was the most important thing, not relationships," one associate recalled. "God is in the work, so it has to be perfect," said another, quoting Kahn. The Kahns' Jewish heritage — father and son — is a recurring theme in the film. Nathaniel visited Israel, where his father had hoped to restore the historic Hurvah Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. Teddy Kollek, the former mayor of Jerusalem, notes that Kahn spent seven years on the project to rebuild the synagogue that was largely destroyed during the 1948 war. Intra-Jewish politics was a major reason why the task was never completed. One haunting image is of Nathaniel standing in front of the Western Wall, running after the paper kipah that keeps blowing off his head. "Yes, I guess I The Louis Kahn-designed capital complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh: A Jewish architect built the capital of a Muslim country. was not only chasing after my father's path but my own Jewish identity," Nathaniel said. The most spiritual and powerful part of the film is the last section, in Bangladesh, where Nathaniel comes to see his father's monumental masterpiece. Louis Kahn worked on the complex of parliament buildings for the last 12 years of his life and they were not completed until 1983, nine years after his death. "It's significant to point out that a Jewish architect built the capital of a Muslim country" Nathaniel said. He finds hope in that fact and takes pride in knowing that his father's name is legendary in Bangladesh, where he is looked upon as a kind of Moses in lending his talent to one of the world's poorest countries. It was there, at the end of the journey, that the father became real to the son. "Now that I know him a bit better," Nathaniel says at the close of the film, "I really miss him. I wish things had been dif- ferent. But he chose it." Nathaniel has come to feel that while his father was not religiously observant, "he felt his profession had a mystical power, and I am fascinated by that." Now working on another film and much in demand since the release of My Architect, Nathaniel said he needs more time to think about the Jewish piece of his identity. "Half of me was missing befor this film, and I want to explore it. I feel like I'm coming home," he said, citing his friendship with Friedman as one of the greatest benefits of making the movie. "You search for your father in one way and find many things along the way," he mused, "like a Jewish identity, and Darrell. I feel like my father is giving me these things now, though he wasn't there for me in one way." Friedman calls his association with Nathaniel "very special," a highlight of his three-decade career in Jewish communal service. (He is now a senior consultant in New York to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.) The film, he noted, will allow a wide audience to see the accomplish- ments of a Jew whose genius Filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn helped break the religious barrier in American architecture, a field now domi- nated by Jewish talent. Much of the appeal of My Architect is in the unique story of Louis Kahn, a solitary and deeply private nomad who expressed himself best in the work he left behind. But part of the pull is in the universal search for where we came from and under- standing who we are, in the fascination children have with their parents' lives, and beyond. Nathaniel Kahn has tapped into that exploration and takes us on a journey that makes us think not only-about his parents and their truths, motivations and secrets, but our own. ❑ marvelous balance, although he does veer into self-indulgence on occasion. But he can be forgiven for that, and for his film's excessive two-hour length, in light of the ineffably touching sequences he achieves. My Architect, which was one of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Documentary, works like a detective story at times, as Nathaniel uncovers the formative episodes in his father's life. Kahn was born Louis Schmalowsky in Estonia in 1901 or '02, and he had a rough child- hood. He came to this country in 1906, set- tling with his family in Philadelphia. The portrait that emerges is of a man who was scarred and looked down on as a child, and who learned to be self-reliant and tough. But if Louis Kahn was the quintessential assimilated American and self-made man, he was hardly an instant success. He was in his 40s before he achieved any recognition as an architect, and throughout his career he was more of an artist than a businessman. He could be charming, charismatic and endearing, but he was also unable to compromise. Many of his commissions•ended in acrimony as a result, with his designs unrealized. In one of the documentary's more fascinating seg- ments, Nathaniel visits Jerusalem to get the lowdown on his father's thwarted involvement in the Hurva Synagogue project more than three decades ago. "Lou was a very spiritual person, but I don't think it was necessarily rooted in Judaism," muses Israeli archi- tect Moshe Safdie. "He must have been aware, as a Jewish architect, he'd done no great Jewish buildings." Kahn's idea was to incorporate and preserve the ruins of the old synagogue, damaged by the Jordanians in the War of Independence. His love- ly design would have overlooked both the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock. But former mayor Teddy Kollek, interviewed on camera, recalls that he decreed the new shul couldn't be higher than the mosque. Kollek's decision made sense from a diplomatic standpoint, but one can't look at Kahn's stunning plans without feeling disappointment. Ultimately, Louis Kahn emerges as a loving father but a lousy husband. In that regard, My Architect shares some common ground with Capturing the Friedmans, last year's documentary cause celebre about another Jewish family with issues. Jewish women should be savoring a laugh, cour- tesy of the movie gods. After years of enduring the stereotype of the shrill Jewish mama and the belea- guered Jewish papa, the tables have finally turned. ❑ 'My Architect' r MICHAEL FOX Special to the Jewish News rustration and failure are really the things that make you," declares an acquaintance of the late architect Louis I. Kahn in the exceptional documentary My Architect. "Maybe he was made by being short and ugly and Jewish and having a bad voice." Kahn's messy, iconoclastic life ended in 1974 in a restroom in New York's Penn Station. Brilliant and influential but not especially prolific, his legacy includes stunning buildings in California, Texas and Bangladesh. He also left behind children by three different women. His only son, Nathaniel Kahn, has fashioned My Architect as a deeply personal search for the father he barely knew while making the case for Louis' place in the architectural firmament through interviews with the likes of Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson. Nathaniel Kahn navigates this tightrope with 3/ 5 2004 48 , My Architect screens 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday, March 5-7, at the Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA. $5.50- $6.50. (313) 833-3237. It is scheduled to open Friday, March 12, at the Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield Township; (248) 542-0180.