Tell Them Who You Are (2005)

Image credit: Haskell Wexler: n/c

TESTY BUT TALENTED Fathers and sons and cranky documentaries, oh my!

Tell Them Who You Are is a fluky and revealing portrait of the veteran cinematographer Haskell Wexler. A spry 80 when most of it was shot, Wexler is a rude and imperious man, yet he's possessed by art and life — he's a sacred monster of testiness. Directed by Wexler's son Mark, in a therapeutic personal-vérité style, the movie offers up a smattering of tasty yarns about the making of In the Heat of the Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Bound for Glory, but the heart of it consists of Wexler berating his son right on camera, telling him how to direct his movie. More often than not, he's right. Beneath its exploration of fatherly distance, this is really a portrait of why cranks make better artists than earnest nice guys.