Susan Granger’s review of “Must Read After My Death” (Gigantic Releasing)
Filmmaker Morgan Dews unearths the emotional kaleidoscope that permeated his grandparents’ lives in this revealing documentary.
In 2001, after the death of his maternal grandmother Allis, Dews discovered a multi-media stash of Dictaphone and tape recordings, along with reels of home-movies, labeled MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH and soon realized how very little he knew about his fractured family’s traumatic history. As Tolstoy wrote, “while happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
When Allis and Charley met, they were married to other people. Since both were non-conformists and into ‘open marriage,’ that didn’t post much of a problem – at least, not at first. Charley, more than Allis, relished his freedom and she, being the dutiful ‘50s housewife, indulged his incessant philandering while raising their daughter and three sons. But she was anxious and resentful – and the angst took its toll.
A hyper-critical, heavy-drinking insurance exec based in Hartford, Connecticut, Charley spent several months each year on the road, often in Australia, and his audio “letters” reveal his liaisons with a multitude of women, many of whom added their own messages to Allis. Meanwhile, on the home front, unconventional, pre-feminist Allis coped in various ways, many of which screwed up the lives of their children. Chuck, the eldest, suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia and was eventually dispatched to a mental hospital – an upheaval which understandably affected the lives of his siblings: Bruce, Douglas and Anne. Patronizing psychiatric therapy – in and out of the Institute for Living – didn’t help much.
Having had experience making short films, Morgan Dews decided to superimpose Allis’s home movies on her audio recordings to create a virtual scrapbook filled with memorabilia in a genre that is reminiscent of “Capturing the Friedmans.” There are the idyllic summer frolics and winter snowman-building but, just beneath the veneer of suburban camaraderie, lurk fleeting glimpses of loneliness and betrayal.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Must Read After My Death” is a haunting, troubling 7, therapeutically transforming home movies into visual art.
