51 Birch Street (2005)

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  August 17, 2007

  gator681

  [font=Century Gothic]With "51 Birch Street," filmmaker Doug Block has made a documentary about his parents, Mike and Mina, who were married for more than fifty years. After Mina's death, Doug tries to form a connection to his emotionally distant father. Three months later, to t... read morehe shock of Doug and his sisters, Mike marries his former secretary and announces plans to sell the family home in Port Washington, Long Island, intending to move to Florida.[/font]
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  [font=Century Gothic]"51 Birch Street" is an extremely personal film that I think wants to have something profound to say about marriage but does not escape the pull of the central story.(Doug also talks about his own marriage but that is about it.) I would not want to know the details of my parents' marriage, much less somebody else's, even if it did make them sound more interesting. In the end, I understand even less why somebody would ever want to get married. [/font]

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  April 4, 2009

  SunilJawahir

  Interesting because it's so personal. The director obviously wanted to make a documentary about his family but found out more than he was ready for.

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  October 25, 2009

  SansSouciBlogs1

  I pulled a DVD off the shelf and sat down to a documentary that moved me emotionally, to such a point that I am haunted by it.
  
  51 Birch Street came out in 2005. It is a film by Doug Block whose intent was to document his family's life and in doing so unearthed his parent's deepe... read morest secrets. Our question to ourselves is: how much is too much information?
  
  51 Birch Street rubs our noses into our own lives by giving us a family to observe and identify with. We all can.
  
  Doug does documentaries and does them well. He also photographs weddings and knows which ones will last and which ones will dissolve within the year.
  
  The movie begins with his parents Mike and Mina in the back yard celebration of their 50th anniversary. At that moment they make marriage look so easy, so "the way it should be."
  
  In interviews, Mina is usually the outspoken one, and Mike sits by passively, but appears to agree with all Mina offers. She loves him. She says so. In her own way.
  
  They married in the early 1950's and lived on Long Island, New York in the town of Port Washington, a town I know well. It was a typical 3-kid-house-suburban life. Mother home. Dad works. The post war American dream.
  
  Mike Block is described by one of the daughters as a typical 1950s father who never shared his feelings. None of the children feels close to him or remembers having any together-time with him.
  
  Mina is the center of the universe, and when she becomes ill suddenly and dies the universe implodes, then explodes, when her volumes of journals are found. Her friend becomes an integral key to information and speaks for Mina, who has left cartons of loose leafs, thousands of handwritten pages, boxes of typewritten elucidations of her life. Was this a legacy or a curse? Mina's friend feels Mina would have wanted her children to read the journals.
  
  The children decide that they have an obligation to read her diaries and learn that their mother was in pain for many years. References to entries are made visible to the viewer by highlighting varies typed words, as if in a cryptic puzzle or "search-a word."
  "Extramarital." "Outside the marriage." "I am begging for your love."
  
  She was in love with her therapist "Ben," and wanted to have an affair with him. He wouldn't; she had one with someone else. She was a lonely dissatisfied woman. She was an adventurous, passionate, open-minded (pass the joint, kids) woman. But the kids don't remember feeling particularly attached to her; she was distant. She was disconnected. She was miserable.
  
  The universal reaction is, how much do I want or need to know?
  
  Viewing a family in its vulnerable state is like watching a car accident.
  We are shocked but can't turn away. We are glad it didn't happen to us.
  But unlike a car accident, we can't just drive off. We all know this vulnerability in our deepest place. We've been there in some way either through our family or our own marriage or relationships.
  
  A mere three months after Mina's death, Mike, age 83, marries his former secretary. The children are shocked, and new questions arise that pop out of Mina's journals. Was Mike having an affair with Carol years ago? Their first kiss at the wedding was about "12 seconds long."
  
  So the mystery unravels as Doug's camera rolls. What I also found to be interesting was Doug and his wife's view of their own marriage and connect with the universal premise: that no union is ever perfect.
  Happiness is on a day-by day basis. I was intrigued also as Doug and his wife live where I grew up in a housing development on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Stuyvesant Town, that pulled me in emotionally even more.
  
  The use of a movie camera helped Doug to connect with his father, who opens up and is confronted by questions. No, he never cheated and yes, he was very unhappy for many years. When Doug asks his father after his mother's passing, "do you miss her?" and his father says he didn't, my heart broke for all of them.
  
  But in the end, it is Mike who is the one who opens up like a character in a novel. We see real growth; the camera has enabled him to communicate. He reconnects with a woman with whom he has a basic warmth, a genuine bond. He can now smile and have a life.
  
  The camera is a hero.
  
  And so is the ability to communicate.
  
  5i Birch Street has been acclaimed from here to Toronto. No one in the family expected this. The daughters were uneasy about the revelations and how their lives were an open book for the world to read. But where ever there was an opening there was applause. This seemingly simple documentary had connected us all with the thread of the human condition.
  
  You can view the trailer here.
  http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi900989209/

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  October 25, 2007

  thrusz

  Man, I really hate falling behind on movie reviews. I actually feel pretty bad right now because I have to be at work in an hour and I know I don't have the time to review all these movies the way they should be reviewed, but here it goes.
  
  I remember seeing the trailer for th... read moreis movie Honestly, it really intrigued me. My father died when I was twelve and part of me has always been slightly concerned about tarnishing that perfect image of my father in my head. I somewhat assumed that Block had the same feelings. In a way, he did and he didn't. I can't blame the movie for not being my life. That's obviously impossible, but Block led a wonderful life a long time adult relationship with his mother. (Not like that, skeez!) So when his mother died, he investigated and discovered that his mother was a real woman with real issues. However, this concept comes and goes throughout the documentary.
  
  Here's my thought process. The beginning of the film discusses how close Block is with his mother and how distant he is with his father. Somehow, these feelings are morphed and ignored and it is later revealed that no one was close to mother and that dad is a really relatible guy. But really, these are just statements that are made by both Doug Block and the rest of the family. It seems simply like a moody piece and that emotions are dictated by the moods the individuals are in.
  
  Yes, it's interesting to read that that people put on two faces, but the people documented are already very honest with the camera. There is very little prying going on and no one really walks on broken glass. Perhaps we can thank Block for choosing the most honest aspects of his footage, but there really was no need for research because everyone is always saying how they really feel outright.

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