This haunting documentary about a real family on the edge in the supposedly halcyon days of 1960s America has a leg up on recent movies that have dramatized a similar subject.
Must Read After My Death opens in New York on 2/20 and Los Angeles on 2/27.
If you live outside of NY and LA, you’ll be able to stream the film digitally beginning 2/20:
“The public will be able to access the film for digital viewing at http://www.giganticdigital.com beginning this Friday morning, February 20th at 10am Eastern. (This is the same day that it opens theatrically in New York.) The ticket price will be $2.99 for a 3-day, unlimited viewing ticket. We’ll be streaming the film in up to HD quality (depending on the viewer’s available bandwidth and hardware setup) and commercial-free. Beginning on the 20th we’ll be launching v.2 of our player which will allow the viewer to dial up or dial down the quality of the stream so that they receive the best possible quality for their particular setup.”
I’ll have a full review up by the end of the week.
Filed under: Film Festivals, Trailer
Tags: Must Read After My Death
Looks incredibly intriguing. I’m looking forward to your review, Craig.
Interesting.
I just got word the film will be streamed online for about $3 if you live outside of NY and LA. I’ve updated the post with the pertinent info.
It does look intriguing. My only cause for hesitation is that it seems such a terribly sad tale. I can happily submerge myself in the dysfunctional and tragic reality found within films like Revolutionary Road, but in docos it hits me harder. That’s not a bad thing, but I have to be in the right frame of mind for it.
If you happen to be one of ten friends of mine, I can offer free passes to see this officially online. I still need to see it myself, but I keep letting the online pass thing expire, ugh.
I know that sounds like shameless self promotion or something, but if you want to see this movie online for free via Gigantic releasing let me know, I have these passes that are just going to get wasted otherwise.
NOTE: I’m just going to go off on a complete tangent here, so bear with me or don’t.
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This does look interesting but I wonder if this isn’t developing into a new sub-genre of documentaries: the well-documented but tragic life.
After recent examples like Tarnation and Dear Zachary, this one feels like a growing trend in documentaries. The curious thing is that whether it’s a trend or just a coincidence, our lives are becoming so increasingly public and well-documented online that these kinds of documentaries will eventually be something a piece of software could logically piece together. With all the twittering, blogging, facebooking, myspacing, flickring, and youtubing of our myriad lives, it’s really not that inconceivable.
So I have to wonder, in a world of people broadcasting themselves 24-7 to anyone who will listen, will we eventually get tired of it?
Sharp observation Joel. It does seem to fit with the move towards making what was once private more public. Which brings to mind the British Reality TV celebrity who is publicly documenting her dying of cancer, and apparently willing to see it through to the very end.
As for your question -> I doubt that something so many have taken up for so long now, in a variety of ways and to various degrees, will lose momentum. I suspect we’ll just get more discerning.
“So I have to wonder, in a world of people broadcasting themselves 24-7 to anyone who will listen, will we eventually get tired of it?”
There was a doc that begged a similar question as that that played at Sundance this year, can’t recall its name.
I once predicted reality TV was a fad that would come and go, oh about 10-12 years ago. My opinion was clouded more by my annoyance with reality TV than rational thought.
Anyway, sartre, you’re probably right. Our need to connect probably trumps how boring and repetitive the vast majority of those connections actually are.
I have never succumbed to reality TV. Two or three minutes of its banality and my eyes glaze over.
I think you’re right in noticing a certain trend, Joel, though this particular film diverges somewhat from the reality TV model because the raw material wasn’t created with the knowledge it would be broadcast for public consumption….the fatal flaw of so-called “reality” tv is that the participants are all aware of what’s going on so we can’t assume they’re not acting.
That’s completely tangential to your point, but what you said kind of made me think about this film a little more.
Later on in the film, Allis is using audio recordings as sort of a diary and there’s definitely the sense that she plans on leaving them behind for posterity, so there is a small element of how far we can trust her as a narrator, but that’s another story best left for when people see the film.
Sartre, this definitely hits harder than fiction which as you note can be good or bad depending on your mood.
I’m hesitant to talk too much about it because I don’t want to spoil anything, but this isn’t a movie that leaves you feeling devastated. Bad things happen and things don’t turn out great for every member of the family, but it’s ended in a way that we’re allowed a little bit of hope.