51 Birch Street

You could say this is nothing more than a glorified home movie, but it is a glorious home movie -- witty, subtle, profound, of both psychological and sociological interest. The first-person filmmaker Doug Block had always been close with his mother and distant with his father, so when after more than fifty years of marriage his mother died quite suddenly and his father remarried within three months, he and his sisters were shocked and mystified. Doug tries to unpack the mystery, through interviews with surviving family members, as well as going through old family pictures and films. Without the overt scandal of Capturing the Friedmans, this well-recorded life of a Long Island household (not for nothing is the film named for the address of the house) delves revealingly into family history and dynamics. Mina was Betty Friedan with her light under a bushel, and her voluminous diaries give Doug an avenue back into the past. Mike was a mechanic, a mechanical engineer in fact, and somebody who approached life from a common-sense mechanical perspective, rather baffled by his wife’s push for passion. Though Doug starts out on his mother’s side, he discovers another side of his father, in a film that has a genuine feeling of exploration and a surprising universality emergent from the specifics of one family’s life. (2006, dvd, n.) *8* (MC-77.)

Just a word of recap on “In Dutch” film series just completed at the Clark: Of the films I was willing to sit through again, Oscar-winner Character struck me as even better second time through, while Oscar-winner Antonia’s Line struck me as a little better but still not good, but little-noticed Simon moved in my estimation from pleasant surprise to hidden gem. If you’re into sex and drugs, or engaged with issues like gay marriage or euthanasia, then definitely seek out Eddy Terstall’s lively exploration of the ethos of contemporary swinging Amsterdam. You won’t find it in any film guidebooks, but it is available from Netflix. (Or soon at the Williamstown public library, where go all the dvds I show at the Clark, including Twin Sisters, which drew a big and enthusiastic audience, and the Criterion Collection disk of The Vanishing, a superb psychological thriller, not to be missed if you have the nerve for it.)