While the film is ostensibly a "49 Up" style look at how Sean the child grew into the man, what it really is is a penetrating look at how Arlyck the young man grew into an old one.
Comment
04/20/07
Following Sean (2006)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 22 Fresh: 19 Rotten:3 Average Rating: 7/10
Runtime: 87 mins
Synopsis: Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck first met Sean while living as a graduate student in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood at the height of the 1960s. The city was awash with the trappings of America's cultural revolution-the San Francisco State University campus flooded with cops in... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Director: Ralph Arlyck
Reviews
In what has become rather epidemic among U.S. documentary filmmakers, Ralph Arlyck's Following Sean is ultimately more about Ralph Arlyck than its ostensible title subject.
04/07/07
An uncommonly perceptive look at the counter-culture and the difficulties of preserving a sense of freedom and integrity in American society.
03/30/07
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02/03/07
The people in this film are so genuine, so real and familiar, that the story maintains power even if the form occasionally vexes.
06/16/06
Arlyck is as pleasant and self-effacing a guide as one could ask for through this meandering but still focused work.
05/20/06
Part of the film's charm lies in its evocation of a generational mural that includes old Marxists, flower children and the progeny of red-diaper babies.
05/18/06
What emerges from Arlyck's musings is a penetrating cinematic essay on how generations in the last century struggled to take hold of history and reconfigure the shape of daily life.
05/03/06
Arlyck spends more time following himself and his own lefty family than checking up on Sean.
05/03/06
Ralph Arlyck's ruminative essay film picks up the trail of Sean Farrell, the former child of San Francisco hippies and the subject of his 1969 short film Sean.
05/02/06
Top Critic
Arlyck's compulsion is to our great fortune. Patient and elegant, his film is a quietly devastating meditation on family, work, and the unrelenting passage of time.
05/02/06
Aryck lightly but complicatedly distills our existence into a series of dichotomies (rich/poor, idle/mobile), using his available subjects to tap into the source of what stunts us emotionally and separates us as philosophical beings.
04/21/06
Arlyck's new film is an honest and thoughtful examination of the people and events that most influenced his adult life and what the '60s really meant to the bigger picture, viewed with the benefit of hindsight.
04/07/06
Character-driven and full of tender contradictions, the film is reminiscent of a Chekhov short story. And as such, it touches on a universality that transcends VW buses and Bush-era politics.
03/23/06
... we may see something of our own journey reflected in [the documentary].
01/24/06
A fascinating portrait of an American family in 1969 (much of the short film 'Sean' is included) and today, strained by different value systems and yet still bound by love.
01/20/06
As fascinating as it is frustrating, docu raises a raft of nicely unresolved questions about parenting and parentage.
01/13/06
Top Critic
At its exhilarating best, Following Sean is reminiscent of the lauded British documentaries that began with 7 Up and continued to follow a cross-section of 7-year-olds into adulthood to see how they turned out.
01/13/06
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