Prodigal Sons

The Prodigal Sons starts off as a documentary where Kim Reed is returning to her to her hometown for her high school reunion. Kim is the filmmaker and she is going back to Montana to meet up with her brother Todd, her adoptive brother Marc, and her mother. Kim is worried that her classmates and friends in Montana will not accept her as Kim, as they have only known her as Paul, the star quarterback and valedictorian of their high school.Most if not all of her old classmates seem happy to see Kim again and seem acutely interested in learning more about Kim's change from Paul to Kim. In fact, the only person who seems to have an issue with Kim's gender identity issues, is her own brother Marc. Marc suffered a serious brain injury in a car accident and seems stuck in the past - where he felt as though he was living in Paul's shadow. Ironically, Paul/Kim was successful; because, she was desperately trying to hide her transsexuality from everyone around her. Kim wants to forget that Paul ever existed and Marc doesn't seem to be able to let his idolized vision of Paul disappear into the past.In addition, to Kim's journey we also learn Marc, who was adopted, is the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. While this is an interesting development it is clear that Marc is limited by his brain injury. Marc becomes increasingly violent and angry, possibly as a result of learning his famous lineage and realizing that he will never be able to fully overcome his head injury. In many respects this is a cruel twist of fate. Kim unflinchingly keeps the cameras rolling as Marc self destructs and even violently attacks Kim.Very interesting story and a wild ride, with family rivalries and a woman coming to terms with her past. We also see the benefit of overcoming major obstacles in life and not letting them limit us.

UPDATE:I have found another documentary movie on a similar theme that is so much better than Prodigal Sons that I am adding a recommendation here. The movie is  Red Without Blue , and it is about identical male twins, one of whom transitions to female. It is as beautiful as this one is ugly, as healing as this one is destructive, and as loving as this one is self-serving and hateful. Also - unlike this one - it gives meaningful insight into the nature and consequences of gender reassignment. Although it is in its own way hard to watch in the beginning because the family are so deeply dysfunctional and unhappy, the reconciliation and healing they experience are transformative to us viewers as well. It is a lovely movie, and I recommend it very, very highly.---------------------For the first time, I am editing a review after further reflection and taking away its stars. I can no longer say I even like this movie. It is mean-spirited in an underhanded way that Kim Reed is probably not even aware of.We are so used to seeing the LGBT character in a movie as the victim that we are blindsided when that character is in reality the victimizer. Reed used this movie to attack and expose her adopted brother Marc's truly horrific mental problems, which did nothing good for him but a lot bad.The moral problem is that Kim is the strong one in that relationship, the gorgeous, charismatic one who all her life had extraordinary advantages and adoration from everybody in her world. Her triumphant return to her home town as a woman and her total acceptance by everybody but Marc makes it obvious that she still operates from a position of extraordinary power in that world.Kim is NOT the disadvantaged, abused one in this movie: Marc is. The fact that his disadvantages were not in any way the fault of Kim or anybody else in the extraordinarily compassionate McKerrow family, rather the fault of the genes he got from his birth parents, does not excuse anything. She was not abused by Marc as they grew up together, so she had no excuse for exposing his troubles to the world. It was cruel and grossly self-serving: nobody ended the movie better off than when it started except for Kim herself.Hers is a fascinating story, but instead of sharing HERSELF with the audience, she turned the camera onto her poor, tortured brother whose only offense EVER was to be jealous of her vastly superior advantages. By doing so she inflamed his problems beyond endurance. If she had just left him alone and told her own story instead of his, we all would be very much better off - especially Marc, but even Kim herself, because it would have forced her to descend from her tower of invulnerability and expose herself instead of her poor, tortured, fundamentally innocent brother.

I'm not sure what the point of this film is since all families have various conflicts and situations to overcome. Admittedly, transgender issues, homosexuality, and famous adoptions don't usually occur in the same family but I suspect even deeper issues were ignored. Much time was devoted to issues involving Kim and her brain-injured brother, Marc, but little was said about the first 20+ years of their lives before his brain injury. Since their relationship seems to be a central theme, it would have been nice to know more about her and Marc's early years together before his brain injury and before her transition. Maybe it's cultural for me, but exploiting family members who have brain damage is not appealing.I also could have done without all the gum-chewing (what professional does this in public while being interviewed?) and the background noise (was the noise supposed to be mood music?). In the first part of the film where Kim revisits the high-school football field of her youth, the background "music" over-shadowed her monologue. It was distracting and gimmicky.The film seemed superficial in that it did not go into depth on any of the interwoven themes: adopted children, sibling rivalry, trans-sexuality, homosexuality, dealing with traumatic brain injuries, and parental relationships. Most of this film seemed contrived and a bit phony in places. I can neither recommend it nor dismiss it thus the three-star rating.