Tell Them Who You Are

I went back to the stack of eBay DVDs tonight. The film I pulled out was Tell Them Who You Are, Mark Wexler's film about his famous father, cinematographer Haskell Wexler.

I had no idea what to expect - family films can be tricky (though they're often very popular - Mme Holiday says they're the surest way to get a sympathetic audience), and a son turning a camera on his cameraman father... well, the opportunities for disaster are endless. Especially given the fact that Haskell is infamous for fighting with his directors.

And sure enough, the car wreck starts right off the top. Mark: "Dad, can you tell us where we are right now?" Haskell: "If you don't know where the fuck we are right now, just look around. You're making a goddamn documentary." Who's the director here? And how uncomfortable is watching this film going to get?

Well, it gets more uncomfortable. Haskell wants to tell Mark something on camera, and has set up the shot he wants before calling him over. Mark doesn't like the shot. They argue about this for so long, Haskell never gets to say what he wants to say. About a third of the way into the film, you feel these two emotional cripples deserve each other. Mark, who is well over 40, comes across as a boy desperate for his father's approval, which he's emphatically not getting. Haskell? Well, it's soon clear why Milos Forman fired him from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - he's completely insufferable.

And yet, the more uncomfortable the film got, the more I found myself sympathizing with both of them: Mark, who was allowing himself to look like an ass, and Haskell, who had to be more aware than most documentary subjects of the vulnerable position he was putting himself in, given his difficult relationship with his son. Clearly, this process had taken a lot of guts on both their parts.

And sure enough, it does become clear that the film is a process. There's never any big emotional revelation, but by the end of the film Mark and Haskell are working together (though Haskell still won't sign a release). The clearest psychological insight comes from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, both of whom clearly had father issues of their own. And you finally get a sense that Mark is a lot more clever than he's let on. He's not the fuck-up he sets himself up as - messing up the audio when shooting his dad's birthday party, being schooled in filmmaking 101 on camera. He knows enough to leave his camera rolling when Haskell, off camera, forgets he's wearing a radio mic and tells his friends what he's really thinking. And Mark and editor Robert DeMaio structure the film beautifully, the revelations coming slowly, our sympathy and understanding building towards a lovely finish.

The real emotional climax of the film, though, happens in the DVD extras. Watch the film, then watch Haskell watch the film. It's worth the price of the DVD.