Waste of time

The greatest movie ever made..!

An action-packed slog

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This documentary will linger in my mind for the time being. It was totally mesmerizing, and a wonderful mystery. I have great respect for artists who are able to get their family in front of the camera and be open, as far as that is possible. I know how hard it is. I also loved the old 80s VHS tapes of the producer's childhood. I don't want to tell much about the story, but it's clear this is a story about a woman who did something that hardly no woman can and that goes against the very image of motherhood and is regarded inhuman. She abandons her very young children to have a career for herself, which damages her two sons beyond repair. Now I've heard quite some stories about men who are able to do this. Maybe society accepts that behavior easier from men then women. What I learned from this documentary is that you never must enable damaging people to do their way with you.

The film screams multi-generational incest, but of course, it is never explained. There are hints of the great grandfather's interest in Maryanne, the grandmother.In some ways this is a Holocaust survivor film, but that too, is never developed. All we know is that because Maryanne's father was a self-hating Jew they moved from Germany to Holland. It is a film with few secrets shared. Why did grandmother live in South Africa? Where did her money come from? How did the film maker deal with his grandmother's passion for him and apparently his father? Despite the lack of disclosure, it is hard to stop thinking of grandmother. In many ways the evasive nature of of the film conveys the grandmother's evasive personality.

Don't be fooled by the intriguing premise and the 7.3 rating of this documentary, because you will honestly be disappointed in the end. This documentary strings viewers along believing there are answers to this "family mystery," when in reality it's just a grandson following around his disturbed and incest-driven grandmother whom is hardly interesting. The cast is one dimensional and there is never any clue about the big "mystery" that led to this family's dysfunction. IMO, this is just a bunch of spoiled, upper class, and selfish individuals who tried to be part of an amateur documentary for attention. There are far more interesting documentaries on family tragedy; this one feels unfinished and uninspired.

I never comment on documentaries but this movie is so bad I feel like I need to vent somewhere for wasting my time. The movie is basically a self made family film about a pretentious and self-absorbed matriarch with psychological problems that make the rest of her family sick. The great mystery for me is why they keep coming back to her. Is it her money or all they all mentally ill? The more I watched the more I hated the subjects in the film. None of them have anything to present that is all interesting unless perhaps you like family tension and strife. The matriarch is only interesting because how warped she is. Maybe it's dementia but the telling of her life story seems to be that she has always been toxic. I feel sorry for any men that crossed her path and no wonder at end of her life she is all alone.