Dear Mom and Dad ...

Originally posted January 30, 2007

Lately we're enamored of simple documentaries that tell the personal stories of random folks. There was Michael Apted's "49 Up" in October and "Hand of God" in December.

Now comes one that tops them both, the heartbreaking "51 Birch Street," which is essentially the stark tale of a postwar marriage. That's pretty much it. But it might be the most compelling documentary of the Ordinary People genre that I have ever seen.

Filmmaker Doug Block goes back to his childhood home in Port Washington, N.Y., to study his mom, whom he's close to, and his dad, the stereotypical World War II veteran who has always been a mystery to his children.

But as Block peels off the layers from his parents' past, it's his mom, Mina, who provides the revelations. It's no secret from the start of the film that Mina and Mike had an unfulfilling marriage. He threw himself into his work and she repressed her desires in order to raise three good kids in a clean house. The way her own son presents the yearning of a '60s housewife is both tender and shocking. Making this film took guts.

The nagging questions throughout the movie slowly build: Do Block and his sisters want to know what their parents really were like? Do these middle age people want to know exactly what their parents were thinking and feeling when they were the same age? Will the secrets of '60s suburbia force the offspring to shed their own hang-ups and see their parents as true flesh and id?

I won't reveal much about the "plot" of the film, because one of the great accomplishments here is the way Block gradually unlocks secrets, and revealing the key device in his film (it involves some memoirs) would ruin much of that for you.

Like a good dramatist, Block patiently lets his story unfold and his characters evolve. Toward the end, he gains insight into (and intimacy with) his father (ostensibly the original mission of the film), and Mike gives us a glimpse behind the facade of the World War II Male. Turns out, this emotionally distant provider might not want to dredge up the past -- especially the negative stuff -- but he's clearly been paying attention all these years.

When, toward the end, the father turns the camera around and directs a question to his son, you get the feeling that Block has his own walls around him. You almost want a sequel that would peel back the layers of the son.

I saw this movie at the Loft Cinema in Tucson, and the local weekly wondered aloud whether such a home movie has much appeal beyond the Block family. It does, because it tells a universal story and asks a compelling question: Why do we take the path in life that we do? And another: Are we happy?

One of Mina's friends, Natasha, while discussing the '60s mind-set and the joys of psychotherapy, explains (perhaps unwittingly) why the rest of us might care about the family that lived at 51 Birch Street during the second half of the century. "What a relief," she says, "for someone to really know us."

In a recent post, about Daniel Burnam's "Family Law," I admitted that no film had made me miss my father like that one did. Today, Doug Block's documentary made me want to get to know my dad.