Nonureva
Really Surprised!
SparkMore
n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
Glucedee
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
Keith Banks
I'm surprised at the low score and negative reviewing of this documentary. Perhaps its a pinch too long but i don't think so. It seems peoples gripe is that there's too much of the family and not enough about Francesca? Um, shes dead. All that we can do is hope her family and friends at the time will communicate, all of whom do. I hadn't heard of Francesca before but somebody recommended it and i thought it was haunting and a beautifully rendered documentary.It is interesting to see the competitiveness within an artistic household, that artists are not above trying to outdo their own family members. It also goes a ways to see why Francesca herself was so obsessively driven for success and recognition. Touching portrait of youth, mostly.
patriot9755
I liked it, it was well done and showed that serious Art and children do not mix well. The parents were for the most part what they had to be to create Art, they were complete artist and narcissists, and they were very good at both, but it left little room for parenting their children. Their daughter, who perhaps by their ques learned she was on her own early on, appeared for the most part quite needy, lonely, and sincerely obsessed with her art. Maybe as a way to bond remotely with her detached parents. The dedication of the parents to their craft was probably their daughters undoing but also the propulsion of their daughters genius. Yes they clearly loved their daughter, and they clearly feel a standard of guilt measured by all who have someone they take for granted until it's too late, and the parents seemed to be still in a lifelong recovery over their loss, trying to make up for their oversight. The parents seem to confront themselves about these issues and are honest and direct in what they thought they did well and the signals they missed, so I liked it, it was thought provoking and did not beg for sympathy.
ThurstonHunger
I was fortunate enough to see some of Francesca's work at the SF MOMA earlier this year. Her photos, seeming to both express and erase herself at the same time, were fascinating.The "Polka Dot" image alone was what called me to the exhibit...Here is an oddly cropped version from the cover of a posthumous bookgo to wiki and Keller2011FrancescaWoodmanBookDustJacketFront.jpgAnyways, this film is indeed called "The Woodmans" and obviously the intent was to focus on all the artists in the family: Mom, Dad, Brother Charlie and Francesca, who killed herself over 30 years ago.Yes, ideally her art should (and can) stand separate from her suicide, but there is some eerie harmony between the work and her suicide. Art is more clearly about choices than life, in art there is much more control, whereas in life, control is at best an illusion.I didn't go into the film expecting it to be a mystery, and I steadfastly tried to avoid any judgment of the parents, even though I felt the filmmaker was pushing us towards one at times. Betty's comments about a therapist and a family Francesca babysat for, and then George's comment about the timing of her death, well they pushed me towards psychoanalysis. Ultimately Georges photo shoot is unfurled, and I'm curious if anyone felt was not at least a little creepy. Meanwhile the friends and other testifiers on behalf of Francesca if anything made her feel more remote than anything. Especially the sweet neighbor whose friendship sadly must have come before two or three major changes in Francesca...They seemed from two different worlds, united by a kindergarten lifetimes ago. Even the parents, at this point have spent more time without Francesca then they did with her. What I might over analyze as willful detachment, could just as well be a weary detachment at this point.Ultimately she is gone. And the film just underscores that. I'm not sure what I would do in her parent's stead, feel honored with a hint of agony? Maybe wish it away until I'm gone, and then let her brother handle it (if he wanted to?) I don't have the all-consuming near religious belief in art as they do. Seeing that was the most striking aspect of the film. For better or worse.I had hope for more footage of Franscesca speaking for herself, instead they offered scribbled diary pages and then even excerpted those. I paused them at times, looking for more in the margins. Whether the film meant to just augment her mystique, or could not find its way in the few scraps left of Francesca, I do not know.In the end, I think people are better served spending time with her artwork then this film, here's a nice set via UC Berkeley onlinewww.berk-edu.com/RESEARCH/francescaWoodman During the film, I felt the images came and went too quickly. Not just for her, but for the other family members as well (Charlie in particular got the shortest shrift, his stuff looked more interesting to me than the parents.) Even at the exhibition, it was so crowded that the experience was diminished for me a bit, when looking alone at these photos now, it works better, in the quiet and stillness.Evidently her work strikes a resonance with young female artists, however I am excluded from all three categories, and still find her work charged. We all struggle with meaningless in our lives, but for her to have captured meaningful photos during that struggle, that's the film I wanted to watch.
rlchianese
When their avant-guarde artist daughter threw herself out a window to her death at 22, her artist-parents had to reassess their lives. The Woodmans focuses on what Betty and George Woodman do to find expression for their grief and their creativity.Francesca was a photographer in the vein of Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe, photographing herself in various levels of undress in both dehumanized and sensuous postures. To say she was precocious is to miss the point—like many artist-wunderkinder, she was self-absorbed, schooled very early on by her parents to be an artist. When she kills herself, perhaps out of frustration with her own languishing career, her ceramacist mother and abstract painter father try to move on with their own art. Betty switches to fine art ceramics and her father begins photographing young female nudes! What we soon discover is that the inner dynamic of this family consumed by art may be a deflection from engaging each other at the very personal level. Can art, which tries to engage us emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, distract us from discovering our true inner self and deflect us from self-awareness at the deepest levels?With ample images from Francesca's work and voicing from her videos and from detailed looks at her parents' art and their extensive comments about it, we are left to decide ourselves what was really going on in the hearts and souls and imaginations of these three creative people.
