MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH offers an intriguing opportunity for viewers to look into the tortured lives of a Connecticut family that struggled to regain its composure and its emotional stability as the decades passed and things got progressively worse.
Allis and Charlie got married and had four children (Ann, Chuck, Bruce, and Douglas). Allis documents the unhappiness in the early years by use of a dictaphone and later through the use of a tape recorder. She would often go out and sit by herself in the car to do so. Years later, these recordings were wedded to stills and family home movies by Director/Producer/Editor Morgan Dews (grandson to Allis). He is able to document this American tragedy with the dispassionate but loving eye of a family member one generation removed. Yet more passion and more insight into the reasons for the family's emotional disintigration might have turned this film from something interesting into something truly riveting.
After the film's U.S. premiere screening at the L.A. Film Festival on Sunday several comments by Director Dews stood out to me. We were informed that Allis and Charlie were "free thinkers". They were not tied to pre-conceived notions of how a family should be raised and perhaps they had felt any problem could be addressed if approached objectively. Their "open mindedness" led them to psychiatry's doorstep at a time that the discipline was stil in its infancy. Psychiatry during the 60's was still developing and it was not uncommon for a patient to come out of therapy more screwed up than when he went in. One wonders if directly or indirectly the fact that Allis and Charlie were free thinkers may have contributed ultimately to some of the family's problems. I know that my own family had similar ideas about changing the world when I was growing up. Those lofty ambitions do not always benefit the development of children trying to grow up and live a normal life.
Another intriguing fact was that the parents were into futurism. This included high tech gadgets such as the dictaphone and tape recorder. Without this penchent for the latest and greatest "tech" perhaps none of the family's history would have been preserved in the first place.
In the Q&A., Dews also alluded to the fact that it was difficult to isolate a clear story line while editing the film. In other words, from all of the countless hours Allis committed to film and tape, Dews had to find a way to choose what was relevant and what to focus on. I wish he had developed a clearer idea of what made his family tick. The lack of clarity shows in his lack of vision putting the film together. We never really know the full story. Charlie had been an alcoholic. Had it all been his fault? Was there a genetic component for mental illness on either side of the family? Did Dr. Lenn, the family psychiatrist, steer the family in the wrong direction during therapy? I guess we'll never really know. It just goes to prove that even when you have a ton of evidence, conclusions about what made people unhappy in the past are not always easy to come by. Blame is not always easily fixed. Catharsis often remains just out of reach. That is why putting the past behind us and learning to live in the now is so very important.
This is not to say we should not re-visit the past, but we should be prepared to be confused by it, and at times disappointed.