Our Father

Our Father

It's really a sympathetic, true life story that requires only knowledgeable individuals to give opinions towards the actions of the doc and someone who has experience being without a child ... One requires the wisdom of Solomon to solve this complicated situation.

Other reviews will provide the story line. Read some. The subject of this documentary is as bizarre and complex...or simple, as the reviewers here present it. Know that going in. Know also that this is a film about frustration, legality and guilt or the lack of it. Beyond those deep themes, the producers had a problem. As the story unraveled, it grew and at the same time became more focused. How to present that? The challenge was to keep the narrative moving forward with more and more supporting characters. The filmmakers decided to focus on a few selected victims/participants and play the 'father' of the title off against them. Wise decision. The film works well with this format. Could it have been tightened up a bit? I suppose so. Some of the revelations and reactions to them become repetitive, but overall, it's an interesting and revelatory documentary.

What a wasted opportunity. This could have been a brilliant documentary. Documentaries should aim to educate and inform, to spark the watcher's interest and make us question. The job of this documentary was only to enrage us. We were told over and over about how bad this was, and far-reaching baseless theories were put out. The main victim daughter did not come across well. Her purpose in life seems to be to punish this man. What he did was wrong. However, a more nuanced documentary that explored the topic without taking such a one-dimensional approach would have respected the intellect of the viewers more. The anti-Christian stance of the documentary was also off-putting. If anything, documentaries like this are "opium for the masses" which leave no space for thinking and ask us to just agree to exactly what the filmmaker's point of view is.

Astounding documentary, which grows only more incredulous as time ticks on. A religious perversion, and unlikely cousin to the current political conservative movement's attempt to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision? You be the judge.

An interesting take on a case that I never would have imagined happening. This is a story documentaries should be aiming for: true, shocking, and well-researched.

The story itself is quite intriguing - a fertility doctor used his own sperm sample to produce offspring, without the consent of his patients. It's a huge ethics violation, no question - and ideally he should never practice medicine again. However, I don't get the sense that this guy is a menace to society. The documentary tried to outline theories of this doctor's motive, which related to his Christian beliefs or his yearning to continue producing white children. That didn't hold water in my opinion. In that sense, the film was a bit dramatic for my liking, but the legal analysis was interesting.

The story is undoubtably insane and the documentary tells it well in the first half, but it slowly devolves into an overdramatized mess. One of the siblings thought the doctors motives were a racist way to create more white people, but that completely ignores the fact that none of the original mothers and fathers were non-white. Another sibling thought the doctor was in a baby making cult because the *Christian* doctor had Bible quotes about pregnancy... in his pregnancy office. The overdramatizing and wild theories was very unnecessary and seemingly used to extend a story that didn't need to be extended. You could skip the last half and miss nothing.

I understand that what these people went through was hell. But I highly doubt the doctor was anything other than mentally ill. There is no big conspiracy or cult, he just thought he was helping people by spreading his seed. Which, of course, is wrong. But he didn't think so at the time. All the conspiracy theories that went nowhere in the documentary were just plain ridiculous and added only for dramatic effect and to add length to the movie. I would have rather seen more interviews with siblings. Perhaps a psychological evaluation of the doctor. And the dramatizations were SOOO unnecessary. People don't need to see a gynecological exam or practice reenacted. Only people with strange kinks would want to see that. I wish Netflix would stop putting reenactment scenes in their documentaries. Netflix is the home of cheesiness. This story was crazy enough on its own, they didn't need all the extra filler. But hey, it's Netflix, it's what they do.

This documentary left me feeling shocked at the sum of children at the end. Leaves you thinking that not everyone is to be trusted and how someone could do such a thing. Would recommend.