Family Portrait (2004) User Reviews

Engaging mini doc

[camachoborracho · 7/10 · 10 July 2005]

Generally I am not a fan of documentaries because they go on forever and are dull since they don't really tell a story. Family Portrait on the other hand works by telling a moving story about real people in a short amount of time.

There are a lot of great things about this film: Beautiful lighting/cinematography (in part due to the wonderful stock LIFE photos), great interviews, drama, etc. In particular I loved the fact that the remaining family returns to an art gallery featuring photos from LIFE about them from years ago and they explain it to their children - very touching moment and poignant to see new generation learning about old, reflection, emotion, etc.

What bothered me was the overused and sappy piano music which trivialized the otherwise powerful images and narration which could stand on their own. Same with the final message talking about poverty amongst black children - this would have been a better message to put in the beginning and then focus on one family or put bits of it throughout the picture. It seems out of place and not really related to the rest of the picture since it focused on one family not society at large, which makes you wonder if the filmmaker's message really came through.

Don't get me wrong, this is a better documentary than most and I was not bored at any time during it so I'd recommend it.

7/10

Great little film that draws you in even if you know nothing of the subject beforehand but the music is awful to a degree that it cheapens the whole film to a certain degree

[bob the moo · 15 March 2007]

I must confess that before this film the only "knowledge" I had of photographer Gordon Parks was the drinking fountain shot featured on the sleeve of Common's "Like Water for Chocolate". However this doesn't really matter because we are filled in early on Parks' Life magazine article. Offering to explain the Afro-American rioting by spending a week with a family, Parks was told to go ahead and joined with the Fontenelle family and their many children. Decades later, we join the surviving family members to look back on this family portrait and the many, many losses and tragedy's that befell the family.

It perhaps sounds like you need to already know the subjects to get into the film but I can assure you that this is not the case. The film does focus on this one family as Parks did but, like him, the issue is the wider themes of poverty and being black in the US. It doesn't really push this down the viewer's throat though and instead just allows us to see these themes displayed across this one family. It is interesting and engaging throughout and quite touching at times, making the film move by very quickly. It makes it look easy but I had to remind myself that Riggen had drawn me into a family I had no knowledge of and had touched me with losses of people I had never known and never will.

Of course my praise for this aspect of the film is tempered by the hamfisted delivery in other ways; and here I'm thinking mainly of the score. I'm not sure who chose that tinkly piano music but it was a terrible, terrible choice that always threatens to tip the film into a sentimental mush that no other part of it deserves. It is overused and cheapens the whole film – the stories and people should have been left clear and cut on the screen, they didn't need the "help" provided by the music.

Despite this though it is a great little film that draws you in even if you know nothing of the subject beforehand. However I cannot overstate how unsuitable and awful the music selection is.