KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

marsh876 This is one of my favorite shows, movie or documentary; I've watched it many times. It's very well done, always interesting, well edited, well written. I've suggested it to many people to watch. The opening sequence with the survey of some of Wright's most famous buildings along with dramatic Beethoven music (5th Piano Concerto "Emperor") is spectacular. The photography of his buildings is often beautifully and lovingly done.Some commentators were disappointed that there were not more buildings shown or that there was not more technical architectural discussion. I agree, but that wouldn't have been practical, and probably not so interesting to the general public. For instance, there really wasn't much discussion of "cantilever", which is what is holding up his most famous building, Falling Water. It would have been impossible to show all of the 700+ buildings he designed. Survey and technical information about Wright are much more available on the Internet now than in 1998 when the show came out. There are free online courses that cover these topics in detail.This show is about Wright the man. His history, the people and events that shaped his life and work, his ideas, along with his greatest works. His life was dramatic enough to provide an interesting story. One thing that stood out for me: when the stock market crashed in 1929, Wright was 62 years old. People didn't live so long in those days and his career seemed over. He was out of money and couldn't get a commission to build, and the economy had tanked anyway. This comes at the end of the first half of the show, and the commentator says somewhat profoundly: his greatest achievements were yet to come.Also fascinating was how his 3rd wife influenced him at this stage of his life, and how she moved his career along.Edward Herrmann does a very good job as narrator. (He died last year in 2014.) More than just reading a script, his voice is thoughtful and responsive to the words, as he's digested them and is reacting personally.Philip Johnson, eminent architect, is the main person interviewed. Interestingly, Johnson talks about his love-hate relationship with Wright, who he knew personally and by whom he was influenced greatly.Overall, the show is beautiful, breathtaking, dramatic, informative and at times shocking. Well worth watching by anyone.

MartinHafer This is a lengthy biography of Frank Lloyd Wright by Ken Burns--after Burns had become a very celebrated documentarian. "The Civil War" had created a HUGE sensation when it aired on PBS and his polish and skills as an artist made this an ideal project for Burns. Here, Burns makes among his best films--and manages to impress the viewer with a very complex man--a man you can love AND hate at the same time!I chose to watch this film for two reasons. First, I think Burns could do a documentary about lint and I'd watch it--his work is THAT good. Second, I just saw a film about Ayn Rand and Frank Lloyd Wright was her ideal hero that she imitated in "The Fountainhead". And, as I watched "Frank Lloyd Wright", I noticed that in many ways he was just like a male version of Rand! Both eschewed conventional morality and thought selfishness was, in fact, a virtue.This is an amazing biography, as unlike most subjects of such films, apart from his brilliance in his field, Frank Lloyd Wright was, for want of a better term, a narcissist. Throughout this Ken Burns film, you learn how he lied, used people, ran up debts, was AMAZINGLY arrogant and just felt that conventional morality just didn't apply to anyone as wonderful as him. He was insufferable...but for him it worked. Why? Because his skills as an architect and designer were so original and so great. Plus, he was the master at charming people and putting on an image people just adored. In other words, his arrogance and odd ways impressed people because they expected such actions from a genius! My feeling is that I would have loved him to design something for me, but I would have hated to have him as a member of my family or count on him as a friend.What are some of the delightful things this guy did over his life? When I had an affair at age 42, he abandoned his family and ran off to Europe--leaving his family with all his debts! The great architect, Louis Sullivan, hired a young Wright before he gained renown. Despite violating his contract with Sullivan, he did assignments on the side AND went so far as to claim he, and not his boss, had designed some great structures (which was an outright lie he made in order to get one of these jobs). As one person so aptly put it, "...he was a nasty man". Yet, despite all this, his work was, at times, pretty amazing and created a huge impact on other architects.By the way, although I disliked Wright as a human being, the incident with Julian Carleton was very, very sad and you had to feel for Mr. Wright. See the film and you'll know what I mean.

ecjones1951 I think the thing to remember about this documentary is that it's called "Frank Lloyd Wright," not "The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright." There are many other resources for those wishing to learn about his designs and the structures he built. (A personal recommendation is the 2002 documentary, "Restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Heurtley House").The format that Ken Burns's films use is well known by now: pans of many still photographs, informative narration -- often jam-packed with facts but clearly presented and in a generally objective tone. Shifts in time and place are smoothly integrated such that it's unlikely that an attentive viewer will get lost.Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 at age 91, and there were very few years in his long life that were not without controversy. He broke all kinds of rules with his architectural designs to create some truly remarkable structures -- "Fallingwater," the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and most especially the Guggenheim Museum in New York. They are all examples of his iconoclasm. They and other structures sealed his reputation as the most famous American architect of his or any other generation. But it was the personal scandals, generally involving other men's wives, that forced him to flee the country on a number of occasions, and put his career in a deep freeze for long spells.By his own admission Wright was an absent and negligent father to his many children; he seems to have been serially unfaithful until late middle age, and he was wild and extravagant with money -- particularly other people's. Clips from a 1958 TV interview with a chain-smoking Mike Wallace are interspersed throughout, and a snippet of it concludes the documentary with Wright proclaiming his immortality. Wright the man seems to have been insufferable, and he seems to have gotten little joy out of life.Yet his doesn't appear to have been a tortured soul; his personal life may have been absent any harmony, and yet that quality repeatedly found its way into his work. Many of Wright's buildings are in breathtaking concert with nature. His interior designs, including that of the Unity Temple and almost all of his stained glass, suggest they are the creation of an unfettered and free spirit. Wright may have been such a man, but if so he directed those energies in many of the wrong places. His self-centeredness, arrogance and certainty of his genius hurt a lot of people around him.It's well to ask why anyone wanted to work under him, and yet the waiting list for the scholarship program he operated at his Taliesin West studios in Arizona in the 1930s, 40s and 50s was a mile long. Students of Wright's were bent to his will; they had to do four hours' manual labor a day, grow their own food, submit to having their love relationships and even some marriages orchestrated by his wife, Olgivanna. The place was run like a boot camp, but the opportunity to work side by side with Wright was enough to keep the applications flowing in. Several graduates of the school are interviewed in the documentary, and for all of them working with Wright seems to have been the seminal experience of their lives -- they don't recall the hoops they had to jump through and the indignities they signed on for in order to have that privilege.To truly love and appreciate the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, it's almost better if you don't know too much about their designer. Still, the dichotomy between the man and his sublime creations makes a great story, and this documentary is a largely successful attempt to bridge that gap.

OGRE-8 After watching this film I cried knowing that prefection was attainable. For proof all you need do is look at the many buildings that are a testament to Frank Lloyd Wright's immortality.