Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

evening1 "I couldn't live with somebody who didn't give making art the importance that I give it -- I just would hate them!" So says 80-ish Betty Woodman in this film about the daughter who indeed became an artist -- and went on to outshine both Betty and her painter husband, George.The couple is brave to have let a camera crew into their world some 35 years after their gifted daughter ended her life in a building leap. They took Francesca's odd photographs -- often portraying herself nude and lying on the ground, as if buried before she is dead -- as artistic expressions and not a cry for help."Those things happen in movies -- they don't happen in normal life," George says of how he once viewed suicide. "I didn't think they really would."Francesca had tried to kill herself once and sought therapy, but managed to complete the deed just days before her father had a show at New York City's Guggenheim Museum.The Woodmans portray themselves as very work-oriented, not a family that encouraged frivolous hobbies. When Francesca floundered, not sure what direction to take in life, Betty recalled saying, "What's this talk of doing something else? You don't know how to do something else!" Francesca was talented and appears to be more successful posthumously than while alive. At times, it seems, her parents are a little envious.But George, at least -- who started to dabble in photography eerily reminiscent of his late daughter's style-- seems to find solace in survival."To stay alive is a pretty good thing to do!"

atlasmb Though it is a documentary, The Woodmans is itself a piece of art. Like much art, it asks and suggests more questions than it answers. The first question might be: is this a film about art or a film about human psychology? Or maybe it is about how the two are connected?The Woodman family had four members, all of whom are/were dedicated to art, not just as an avocation, but as a way of life. The daughter, Francesca, committed suicide at a young age. Much of the film centers of her surviving family's perceptions of her life, her art, and what might have contributed to her suicide.In the end, each viewer can take what they want from this film. As a discussion of art, it touches on many common themes, especially the value or curse of art as self-expression. Does it have value simply because it allows the artist to express himself? Does affirmation from others make art more valuable? Does it have a therapeutic value? Francesca's mother says she stopped creating for a period after her suicide. When she resumed creating, was it a resumption of life? Or was the creation the impetus to go on living? She says that "art is about memory." Of course it can be much more than that.Of course we must ask if art is about introspection, self-examination, self-indulgence, all of these? It can direct one's focus inward or outward. The father comments on the "fragile" and "vulnerable" nature of the artist. Is that due to the artistic temperament? Or the product of seeking affirmation from others?He also observes that there may be a "psychic risk" of being an artist. This seems to be one of the central themes of the movie. But perhaps Francesca's art (and her behavior) might have been a clue to what many will see as clinical depression. Are some drawn to her art because of her (flawed) vision, like they might be to Van Gogh's?Whatever messages or questions one takes from this film, it does ask you to consider the nature of grieving and carrying on. And it might make one consider others in their own lives who have been or might have been victims of their own internal demons.It also makes a statement about the temporal nature of life and the longevity of art.

ThurstonHunger I was fortunate enough to see some of Francesca's work at the SF MOMA earlier this year. Her photos, seeming to both express and erase herself at the same time, were fascinating.The "Polka Dot" image alone was what called me to the exhibit...Here is an oddly cropped version from the cover of a posthumous bookgo to wiki and Keller2011FrancescaWoodmanBookDustJacketFront.jpgAnyways, this film is indeed called "The Woodmans" and obviously the intent was to focus on all the artists in the family: Mom, Dad, Brother Charlie and Francesca, who killed herself over 30 years ago.Yes, ideally her art should (and can) stand separate from her suicide, but there is some eerie harmony between the work and her suicide. Art is more clearly about choices than life, in art there is much more control, whereas in life, control is at best an illusion.I didn't go into the film expecting it to be a mystery, and I steadfastly tried to avoid any judgment of the parents, even though I felt the filmmaker was pushing us towards one at times. Betty's comments about a therapist and a family Francesca babysat for, and then George's comment about the timing of her death, well they pushed me towards psychoanalysis. Ultimately Georges photo shoot is unfurled, and I'm curious if anyone felt was not at least a little creepy. Meanwhile the friends and other testifiers on behalf of Francesca if anything made her feel more remote than anything. Especially the sweet neighbor whose friendship sadly must have come before two or three major changes in Francesca...They seemed from two different worlds, united by a kindergarten lifetimes ago. Even the parents, at this point have spent more time without Francesca then they did with her. What I might over analyze as willful detachment, could just as well be a weary detachment at this point.Ultimately she is gone. And the film just underscores that. I'm not sure what I would do in her parent's stead, feel honored with a hint of agony? Maybe wish it away until I'm gone, and then let her brother handle it (if he wanted to?) I don't have the all-consuming near religious belief in art as they do. Seeing that was the most striking aspect of the film. For better or worse.I had hope for more footage of Franscesca speaking for herself, instead they offered scribbled diary pages and then even excerpted those. I paused them at times, looking for more in the margins. Whether the film meant to just augment her mystique, or could not find its way in the few scraps left of Francesca, I do not know.In the end, I think people are better served spending time with her artwork then this film, here's a nice set via UC Berkeley onlinewww.berk-edu.com/RESEARCH/francescaWoodman During the film, I felt the images came and went too quickly. Not just for her, but for the other family members as well (Charlie in particular got the shortest shrift, his stuff looked more interesting to me than the parents.) Even at the exhibition, it was so crowded that the experience was diminished for me a bit, when looking alone at these photos now, it works better, in the quiet and stillness.Evidently her work strikes a resonance with young female artists, however I am excluded from all three categories, and still find her work charged. We all struggle with meaningless in our lives, but for her to have captured meaningful photos during that struggle, that's the film I wanted to watch.

rlchianese When their avant-guarde artist daughter threw herself out a window to her death at 22, her artist-parents had to reassess their lives. The Woodmans focuses on what Betty and George Woodman do to find expression for their grief and their creativity.Francesca was a photographer in the vein of Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe, photographing herself in various levels of undress in both dehumanized and sensuous postures. To say she was precocious is to miss the point—like many artist-wunderkinder, she was self-absorbed, schooled very early on by her parents to be an artist. When she kills herself, perhaps out of frustration with her own languishing career, her ceramacist mother and abstract painter father try to move on with their own art. Betty switches to fine art ceramics and her father begins photographing young female nudes! What we soon discover is that the inner dynamic of this family consumed by art may be a deflection from engaging each other at the very personal level. Can art, which tries to engage us emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, distract us from discovering our true inner self and deflect us from self-awareness at the deepest levels?With ample images from Francesca's work and voicing from her videos and from detailed looks at her parents' art and their extensive comments about it, we are left to decide ourselves what was really going on in the hearts and souls and imaginations of these three creative people.