Following Sean (2005) User Reviews

A Little Frustrating

[dlatreset · 7/10 · 8 March 2009]

This was a good film with some major flaws. I was drawn to the film because of its purported primary subject, depicted on the cover - Sean. I read the back-story, which serves as the premise for the new film, and assumed we'd be delving into the life of this compelling character.

While there were many satisfying tidbits throughout, we aren't introduced to 'modern-day' Sean until we're more than 20 minutes into the movie. This should serve as an indication of the film's primary flaw. Bottom line: For a film entitled, "Following Sean," we're not really given much time with the title character. We're left guessing about his true thoughts about his hippie upbringing, his parents' decision to allow him to experience said hippie culture unabated at such a young age, and many of the details of his adolescent years and early adulthood. We're given only fleeting glimpses of his parents, both in 1969 and 2005.

What the film fails to acknowledge is the basis for its own appeal - we're drawn in by that little child who is obviously in need of adequate parenting. What were his parents thinking? Why would they allow him to be filmed making references to using drugs at four years old? What sort of backlash did the film's release cause for them? Did it contribute to the breakup of their marriage? Do they wish they had done things differently? I never got the sense that the filmmaker got close enough to his subjects to truly answer any of these questions. Instead, we're given updates on Arlyck's life since the original film's release - almost in slideshow form at some points. It felt, at times, like getting a family update letter that had arrived at the wrong address. You take it all in on a curious level, while all the while realizing it wasn't really meant for your eyes.

We're also not given enough of the 15 minute original short. If we had known our subject, his parents, and even the filmmaker a little better, we could have invested in the updates on a deeper level.

That said, the film is nicely shot, and contains a great soundtrack. Its strongest suit is its title character. I only wish we'd gotten to know him a little better.

Compelling ,touching film that pulls you into it's characters lives...

[ronzo13 · 8/10 · 21 April 2007]

At first I found it a bit predictable,style wise, sixties home movies ,hippies,the Haight, Sean as a little boy talking to the camera ,all cool,your basic documentary type film,I wasn't really that interested in meeting Sean,as an adult, there are so many other things going on. Really , before I knew it, I was well caught up into Sean,his family ,the film makers family and their intense ,admirable lives all around. There are some very poignant scenes that brought tears to my eyes,Sean and his Fathers relationship particularly. Sean is a great guy,kind of hard to read, maybe mixed up maybe not,Mr Arlyck has done an amazing ,deft job of pulling the viewer into this tale.My favorite type of film experience,right here.

The choices we make, the lives we lead, the people we love

[da_lowdown · 8/10 · 31 July 2007]

Stumbled across this gem on PBS the other night. I was initially spellbound by the storytelling ability of the narrator (Ralph Arlyck), but drawn in even further by the tapestry of lives involved. When we think of the 60's and early 70's, we think of Woodstock, hippies, free love, San Francisco, etc. What we don't often dwell on are the lives implicated in the thick of the hippie lifestyle. What lead to those lives? Who were the parents? Grandparents? What impact did this lifestyle have on the children? Grandchildren? Not a judgmental piece of film-making, but it does raise a lot of questions. And no, it doesn't offer a lot of answers. But does life? An amazing piece of film-making.

Interesting though its messages seem illusive

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 21 August 2008]

Back in 1969, Ralph Arlyck made a small film about a neighbor boy named Sean. At the time, the film gained some notoriety and audiences were curious what would one day happen to this boy since he grew up in a Haight-Ashbury home with practically no structure or guidance. At four, he was walking the streets, taking pot and being his own boss.

FOLLOWING SEAN is ostensibly a follow-up film in which Arlyck re-establishes contact with Sean and follows him in his adult years. However, Arlyck never really maintains this clear focus--often diverging into interviews and visits with Sean's extended family as well as Arlyck's. Because of this, the film seems, at times, less of a documentary or attempt to show cause and effect and more a long string of home movies strung together. This isn't all bad, as you do really get to know and care about the characters. However, if your goal is to really make a definitive statement on how these 60s "do as you please" morals affected them in later years, this isn't quite so clear--though there is a pattern, to a degree, of failed relationships--though this, unfortunately, would also mirror recent trends on marriage overall. So you are left wondering just how good or bad this odd childhood was long term--and the film kept me wondering. I did enjoy it--I'm just not sure what it all meant in regard to Sean, but it did have a lot to say about the tenuousness of relationships in general.

Compelling and Delightful!

[LMorland · 9/10 · 17 November 2005]

I saw _Following Sean_ this week in Paris with a friend who lived in San Francisco during the 60s, and we both loved the film. The documentarian's work is prodigious -- we were constantly amazed by the continuous progression of time: just when we thought we'd seen the latest of Sean and his family, another, more recent, slice of their lives emerged on screen. The documentarian wove the story of his own family into the film, and while at first I found the digressions slightly annoying (Sean and his family are so compelling that one wants to see more of them), at the end I decided his decision was correct, and that the study of three generations of his own family deepened the impact of the film.

I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in sociology, social psychology (especially concerning the effects of 60's freedom-loving childraising on their children), McCarthyism, the effects of aging, and in general the history of the United States over the last 50 years. Anyone who lived in Berkeley or San Francisco in the 60s or 70s will be fascinated! I was shocked to realize that _Following Sean_ has, apparently, not been screened yet in the Untied States. A distributor must be found!

Man, What The Hell Happened?

[a_imdb-925-273920 · 6/10 · 14 February 2021]

The SUBJECT of this documentary is fascinating, and the people are interesting. Unfortunately the filmmaker does too much of the talking, never asks important questions (or at least can't get important people to talk), and the film doesn't so much conclude as peter out.

"Following Sean" is not really about Sean Farrell; this is a midlife-crisis on film, but it pussyfoots around the filmmaker's own life and fails to draw the parallels that would really tie up the story.

Ralph Arlyck moved to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco back in 1969 to study filmmaking. His environment was a natural subject (although the Summer of Love had ended two years before, while back in Ralph's home state there was this music festival...) Anyway, Arlyck made a student film about a local hippie child and found fame, a career, and love. But life swept him along and away, until 30 years had passed, and fame was only a memory, he was untouched by fortune, his grown children laughed at his memories, his father was sarcastic about his career, and his wife needed to be on her own for a while. So Arlyck decided to go back to where it had all started for him and see what had become of that child and the others who were part of the story - to see if he could make sense of the '60s. And that's the bulk of this film.

This isn't some cut-and-dried docudrama with an omniscient narrator talking us through each segment of a structure - it's an investigation, which is fine, and Arlyck himself is inevitably a big part of the story; his sarcastic and skeptical voice is entertaining. He's trying to come to terms with his own life, and what the days of his youth really meant, but he needed to get OTHER people to do more talking.

I think the story of Arlyck's own parents and its correlation with Sean Farrell's grandparents is interesting - but we need to hear SOMEthing from Sean's mother - she seems to be content to let daughter Debbie do the talking for her, and Debbie is wrapped up in her own problems and completely dismissive of the past. How did she come to marry John Farrell, and what did her parents think about that? Just how true WAS the stuff Sean told Arlyck back in '69: exactly how often DID Sean smoke or eat pot? Kids say the darndest things, particularly when they think adults want to hear them. What did Sean think of his life growing up in the Haight? Why on earth does he want a Russian mail-order bride? On the Arlyck family side there's a little too much my-happy-home, but with hints of deep problems that are never discussed. I'd've loved to hear Arlyck's wife's thoughts about the '60s too....

Of course, the rough beast that was actually slouching toward midtown Bethlehem in '69 was Sean's father John, and we do get something of him, at least. I knew a number of John-Farrell types back in the day, rich kids whose life choices seemed to have no consequences for themselves, but big ones for other people. That seems to be the conclusion we're left with - John is still slouching around (not around San Fran of course, prices have gone up up UP) but he's getting old, and going mobile isn't a long-term option in a world of healthcare costs and palimony. Arlyck discusses his own parents' radical past, but that was aimed at economic opportunity and intentional community - their commune, warts and all, is a far cry from John's deteriorating situation, a likely burden on his own long-suffering children.

The post-finale song, Lori McKenna's "Never Die Young", is an inspired choice - it ends the film with a sense of wistful regret. Without it, there wouldn't really be a conclusion.

More than the 60's

[cadmandu · 9/10 · 17 January 2006]

That old line about "If you remember the 60's you weren't there" doesn't apply to people with cameras.

This is much more than a documentary about a boy born to hippies in the Haight in the 1960's. It's about the four generations that telescope around him, before and after. It's about family.

It's also about the choices that people make, the prices they pay, and the successes that have or don't have. It's also a slice of American life of which we could use a whole lot more. The scene of Ralph's parents' friends (all of them well into old age) sitting around, reminiscing and giggling about being Communists in upstate New York is totally priceless.

And the enduring hope of young people who gleefully plunge into marriage and families is what makes the world go around.

Most of the newspaper reviews for this film were ho-hum, and one was downright negative. Don't believe them, this film's a keeper.

This thing just destroyed me..

[dazzlem · 10/10 · 1 August 2007]

I don't know if it was the mood I was in or what, but I just had a wonderful time with this movie. It's scope is epic. It covers 60 years of counter culture adventures big and small in 90 minutes. The film maker's whole life is here. The thing is decades in the making. We jump back and forth through space and time meeting a cast that runs the gambit from hero of the American Communist movement to capitalist Russian Trophy bride. FAR SUPERIOR to the similarly subjected over-hyped "Tarnation" of a few years ago. I guarantee you will like this movie. It's a great story told in a very cool way. A documentary that engages the way fictional narrative engages. This gets tossed around a lot in reviews but; It is a remarkable achievement.

Selah.

Brilliant, complex, funny, sad, wonderful.

[raphaelrajendra · 10/10 · 11 May 2006]

I know we tend to rate most highly those movies we've seen most recently, but I cannot recommend _Following Sean_ too highly. Engaging, funny, brilliant, simultaneously comforting and uncomfortable, and observant, the movie asks us to confront our own lives' narratives; received wisdom about the 1960s and more recent American history; the meaning of adulthood, and a thousand other things. It made me think in a way films rarely can -- the way books more often can -- but couldn't possibly give me a headache. And as for technical elements, the editing and narration are perfect, and the granular texture of the film itself complements that of the families' stories. I actually loved _Following Sean_, and came to IMDb to look for information about whether it will ever be released as a DVD. (The message board says it'll be released as a DVD in Oct. 2006.) I rarely buy movies, but I'll buy this one.

Meandering

[Scroobious · 5/10 · 22 July 2010]

This movie should be called following Ralph. The director/narrator does include quite a bit of Sean, but it really becomes a means to discuss himself. I don't think this is a narcissistic move as much as an attempt to make a full length documentary out of some very intriguing and very short footage of a young Sean. The documentary is based around the director's old footage which is somewhat interesting, but it stretches thin when the director tries to pull it out into a full length.

The premise is also intriguing. After seeing the footage of a young Sean I was very interested to find out who he had become as a man. And who he has become defeats expectations, not in such an uplifting way as surprising.

I love a good documentary, especially one that is a character study. But in the modern vein of Michael Moore documentaries, the filmmaker too often becomes the film, or at least the voice that tells you what to think or how to feel about the subject matter. And this documentary makes those mistakes to the point that the subject isn't exactly followed as much as it meanders. If you haven't seen all of the Maysles brothers documentaries, watch those, see how a real documentary is made... and then maybe, consider seeing this.

very moving meditation on life and relationships.

[TheTwistedLiver · 8/10 · 26 February 2009]

I stumbled upon this film on Netflix while perusing the documentary section and I'm very glad I did. This was very moving and thoughtful film, the filmmaker weaves his own life story into that of the subject, who was a precocious four year old boy in the Haight Ashbury sixties and now an adult trying to figure out his own place in the world. A very quiet meditation on life, relationships, the impermanence of everything we think will last forever. It was like watching years fly by in the blink of an eye, which in a way they actually do, both beautiful and depressing. Possibly not for everyones taste but as someone who didn't live in the sixties or have anything to do with those times it was still a fascinating peak into life at the time and the people who lived during that era.

The struggle to maintain a balance between freedom and responsibility

[howard.schumann · 8/10 · 28 July 2013]

Sean Farrell grew up in a very unusual environment. He lived with his parents, Johnny and Susie, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s, the center of what has come to be labeled as the "hippie" counterculture. In 1969, Sean, then four-years-old, was the subject of a fourteen-minute documentary directed by Ralph Arlyck, a film student at San Francisco State, who lived in the apartment below Sean's. The film, simply called Sean, shows a funny and very bright young boy talking spontaneously about things four-year-olds do not normally talk about: eating grass, speed freaks, turning on, and being "busted" by the "pigs." Although by the time of the interview, many of the original hippies had moved away from the area as the drug dealers and their hard drugs came in, enough "flower children" remained to provide Sean with an immersion into what the movement may have been like in its hey day, even though, by that time, it was reduced to beggars in the streets and users overdosing daily. The documentary played at Film Festivals and won praise from prominent filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut, but drew negative responses from Middle America and was shown in the White House as a warning about the dangerous path in which young people were headed.

Though the director lived in the area, he was more of an observer than a participant and did not hide his disdain for the lack of work ethic and family responsibility that he had seen in the neighborhood, a way of life contrary to the values he had been taught by his leftist East Coast parents. He admits that his favorite bumper sticker at the time read, "Hate cops? Next time you're in trouble trying calling a hippie," and characterizes protest movements as "fun" and "playing revolutionary." Arlyck moved back to New York but decided to return to San Francisco thirty years later to search for Sean and find out what had happened to him and his family (who separated soon after the film was made) and whether he had "became a drug addict or a stockbroker" (as if they were the only two choices available).

The result is the follow-up documentary Following Sean, an 87-minute film that spans three generations and several decades, moving through the passage of time to reflect the realities of life - love, children, marriage, family, for both Sean and his family and that of his own. Consisting of home movies, photo essays of life in the 60s (including "Be-Ins" and drugged-out hippies), and interviews, the film offers a compelling journey through the process of understanding the choices we make in life, their consequences, and the unexpected direction in which they often take us. Arlyck is non-judgmental, examining life as it is, not always as we want it to be, and the main theme of the film could be said to be the struggle to maintain a balance between freedom and responsibility.

Showing how his own growth paralleled the lives of Sean and his family also adds an element of depth to the film that otherwise may have been missing. Following Sean is an intelligent and often moving documentary that spends considerable time with the grown-up Sean (how he turned out is better left for the viewer to discover), but never gets close enough to its subject to probe any difficult questions such as what his experience growing up in the Haight was really like for him and how it affected his formative years. To its credit, the film provides a new generation with a look at the counterculture, one of the seminal events of the sixties, but fails to offer any perspective or explore what it was really about, beyond the fact that eighty people stayed in the upstairs apartment at various times.

What is not discussed is that beneath the outward "hippie" revolt against the establishment that often went to bizarre extremes and gave the media the excuse to call it a "freak show," there was a profound longing to begin to shatter the spiritual and social straight jacket of the fifties with its empty materialistic values and to explore, through psychotropic drugs and other means, a larger vision of ourselves and the nature of reality beyond the limited perspective of our five senses. While the film pays lip service to anti-establishment ideas, it does not provide what it claims to be its primary purpose – an intimate examination of the legacy of the sixties and its counterculture.

I fell in love with Sean

[akh8 · 10/10 · 22 January 2012]

I love this film. I immediately fell in love with the young boy Sean. I agree with another reviewer that I would have liked to learn more about what his life was like during the 30 years he was not being filmed. Yes, the film was mostly about Ralph and not Sean but I think that was kind of the point. It is that we are all part of the human family and there are parallels in what would seem to be such different lives (in this case Ralph and Sean) . There is no moral to the story, no conclusion, nothing specific to be learned. It is just about life. How it throws people into all sorts of crazy situations, most times without our consent. As a teacher, I feel I have seen it all and it seems that so many times there are children who will do well despite their upbringing and those who will flounder despite every opportunity and support imaginable. Most parents do what they think is best for the child and then just hope and pray they turn into happy, healthy, contributors to society. I now want to find the original film of Sean at age 4 and see the whole thing. I gave this film a 10, I loved every minute of it.

Following a Culture

[estella2 · 10/10 · 10 January 2014]

I think this is one of the best movies/documentaries that I've seen in my life. The cinematography was beautiful and the interviews were captivating. Ralph was about the same age I am right now when he journeyed out to San Francisco. I really identified with the feeling of wanting to get away and discover the "utopia" that supposedly exists in life; wanting to know what your place is in the world and not having a clue, and confusing trends and egoists with profound epiphanies and prophets.

How can you live ideally without hurting others around you? Is it possible to take a hedonistic 'free' ride as well as have the fulfilling family life? Can you really have both, or is that just a fantasy? The description of 'free spirit' came to mean something entirely different to me after seeing this. After I watched this movie I felt like Ralph indirectly answered some of these questions on life that many struggle with. Even with this sobering warning, sometimes you still want to believe in the fantasy, and even though we know it is foolish, many of us will still probably go on through life with unrealistic expectations only to discover the same thing that Ralph has uncovered.

Quietly Excellent

[gerling · 10/10 · 2 August 2007]

Beyond the portrait of Sean's family, from his grandparents to his son, this film does such a great job of showing the evolution of generational values--from the Old Left to the New Left to the current generation. It not only shows these transitions from a cultural standpoint, it adds a very important socio-material layer to our understanding of this transformation.

Also, I'm normally tired of the documentary trend of including the author/director in the narrative in order to reflect some sort of participatory ethos, but Arlyck's presence really adds depth to the changes mentioned above. Great documentary.

Intelligent, thought-provoking documentary

[runamokprods · 8/10 · 5 April 2011]

Understated, thoughtful documentary about different recent generations in America, and how their politics and upbringings intermeshed and evolved.

As a film student in 1969 Ralph Arylck made a 15 minute short about a bright 4 year old boy who lived upstairs with hippie parents in Haight-Asbury. 4 year old Sean had tried pot, refused to wear shoes, etc.

Now Arlyck sets out to find out what happened to Sean 30+ years later – was he a mess as some predicted? Had his upbringing left him free as others hoped?

Of course the answer is far more gray and complex. And in examining Sean and his family, film-maker Arlyck also looks at his own. A quiet film, not deeply emotional, but a very interesting and worthy essay about parental ideals, family, and life.