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.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

T Y This documentary is useful to neophytes, and it will get you up to speed on the general shape of Wright's episodic life, career and accomplishments. Its on-screen experts are on the silly side. Meryl Secrest strays into self-parody as she delivers her glib stories with an over the top poseur accent originating from parts unknown. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer looks like a pale, red-eyed cadaver. Brendan Gill overstates half his anecdotes until any reasonable person begins rolling their eyes. As with any career this long, many Wright stories are truncated or left out. The speedy failure of Midway Gardens (via bad financing) is pushed off screen by the tragedy at Taliesin. A suitable coda for this production would have been to flash the images of all the architects Wright influenced or trained directly (Bart Prince, Bruce Goff, Schindler, Neutra, John Lautner, Paolo Soleri, too many too name...).Ken Russell "civil-wars" another topic. And the treatment is now a tepid, dull, formulaic, outdated way to encounter any material.

ecjones1951 I think the thing to remember about this documentary is that it's called "Frank Lloyd Wright," not "The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright." There are many other resources for those wishing to learn about his designs and the structures he built. (A personal recommendation is the 2002 documentary, "Restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Heurtley House").The format that Ken Burns's films use is well known by now: pans of many still photographs, informative narration -- often jam-packed with facts but clearly presented and in a generally objective tone. Shifts in time and place are smoothly integrated such that it's unlikely that an attentive viewer will get lost.Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 at age 91, and there were very few years in his long life that were not without controversy. He broke all kinds of rules with his architectural designs to create some truly remarkable structures -- "Fallingwater," the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and most especially the Guggenheim Museum in New York. They are all examples of his iconoclasm. They and other structures sealed his reputation as the most famous American architect of his or any other generation. But it was the personal scandals, generally involving other men's wives, that forced him to flee the country on a number of occasions, and put his career in a deep freeze for long spells.By his own admission Wright was an absent and negligent father to his many children; he seems to have been serially unfaithful until late middle age, and he was wild and extravagant with money -- particularly other people's. Clips from a 1958 TV interview with a chain-smoking Mike Wallace are interspersed throughout, and a snippet of it concludes the documentary with Wright proclaiming his immortality. Wright the man seems to have been insufferable, and he seems to have gotten little joy out of life.Yet his doesn't appear to have been a tortured soul; his personal life may have been absent any harmony, and yet that quality repeatedly found its way into his work. Many of Wright's buildings are in breathtaking concert with nature. His interior designs, including that of the Unity Temple and almost all of his stained glass, suggest they are the creation of an unfettered and free spirit. Wright may have been such a man, but if so he directed those energies in many of the wrong places. His self-centeredness, arrogance and certainty of his genius hurt a lot of people around him.It's well to ask why anyone wanted to work under him, and yet the waiting list for the scholarship program he operated at his Taliesin West studios in Arizona in the 1930s, 40s and 50s was a mile long. Students of Wright's were bent to his will; they had to do four hours' manual labor a day, grow their own food, submit to having their love relationships and even some marriages orchestrated by his wife, Olgivanna. The place was run like a boot camp, but the opportunity to work side by side with Wright was enough to keep the applications flowing in. Several graduates of the school are interviewed in the documentary, and for all of them working with Wright seems to have been the seminal experience of their lives -- they don't recall the hoops they had to jump through and the indignities they signed on for in order to have that privilege.To truly love and appreciate the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, it's almost better if you don't know too much about their designer. Still, the dichotomy between the man and his sublime creations makes a great story, and this documentary is a largely successful attempt to bridge that gap.

agorelik Ken Burns, as usual, overcooks the porridge and we end up with lots of glop on the floor.This melodrama spends far too much time on FLW's self-inflicted turbulent personal life, with precious little time or effort spent on his actual buildings (which is what we're here to see). Only four buildings (Taliesen East/West, Johnson Wax, Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum) are discussed in any detail whatsoever (in a multi-hour documentary this is inexcusable). FLW's entire period in Los Angeles and the Tokyo Imperial Hotel are not even mentioned! We glimpse Robie House once. And, I'm really not interested in Ken Burns' impressions of what music FLW would like.Very shallow piece of work.

cmyklefty Frank Lloyd Wright is the most innovative and influential architect in the 20th century. He shaped the way we think about buildings today, and put architecture at a different level of thinking. Buildings look simple in design but modern in method of the art of architecture. Even if you are an architect or not, you will enjoy this documentary.