SXSW Film Reviews

TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE

D: Mark Wexler

Documentary Feature Spotlight

Mark Wexler is a commercially successful photojournalist whose credits include a television special about Air Force One. His father, Haskell, on the other hand, is a certified Hollywood hero: star on the boulevard and Academy Awards for his landmark cinematography (including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Mark is a blandly jovial fellow who idolized police officers and FBI agents as a boy. Haskell, the director of Medium Cool and The Bus, is a certified fuck-the-pigs radical who swears like a longshoreman. Tell Them Who You Are is the story of both Wexlers, together. Mark, who's made one other feature documentary, tends to get steamrolled by his more charismatic subjects, and this film is no exception. To capture the essence of their relationship, Wexler fils chases the elder around Montecito diners, peace marches, and political agitation groups, but the real stuff is in the little moments between: Haskell won't sign Mark's release form, harangues him about setting up the shots, and threatens to depart the project, and Mark trembles before his opinionated father. Their interplay says much about the relationship between parents and their grown children, and it's a lark to watch.

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Arbor, 6:45pm