Great Photo, Lovely Life: Facing a Family's Secrets

2023

1 hr. 52 min.

Documentary

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100%

6 Reviews

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86%

Fewer than 50 Ratings

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Amanda Mustard, a renowned photojournalist drawn to the power of truth-telling through the lens of her camera, returns home to Pennsylvania to investigate the multiple sexual abuse crimes committed by her grandfather. A visual whirlwind of memories from her family's archive unravels a world of secrets and help illustrate a granddaughter's unflinching attempt to disrupt a cycle of intergenerational trauma through the voices of the survivors and her grandfather himself. An eight-year cinematic journey with revealing interviews, archival photographs, and intimate home movies, GREAT PHOTO, LOVELY LIFE: FACING A FAMILY'S SECRETS documents a personal journey to not only uncover, but also understand the impact her grandfather, a local chiropractor, had on her family after committing decades of serial sexual abuse, and explores the complexities of the silence that followed. Through her emotionally raw quest to expose the truth, Mustard's investigation reveals decades of secrecy and coverups rooted in shame and self-deception and discovers the dysfunction lurking in her own family, eventually bringing her to uncomfortable and unexpected confrontations and reckonings. Finding the courage to dredge up painful memories, face her own feelings about her grandfather, and to have heartbreaking but healing conversations, Mustard explores the depth and breadth of her grandfather's actions, laying bare a path for the survivors to shed light on the abuse in order to make sense of the past, find peace in the present, and empower them to move forward.

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Ruth F

Excellent. What an incredibly honest family.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/06/24

Full Review

Regina W

Really got to raw emotions, showed failure of people to confront their wrong doings, but in the end made the world a little better just by attempting to get people to talk to about those secrets.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

12/24/23

Full Review

Nicole n

Amanda Mustard is one to watch!

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

12/13/23

Full Review

scotty e

It felt exploitive and a misuse of a documentary trying to settle the filmmakers personal vendetta against their own family. This is a massively important subject that could've been handled more tactfully. Instead it ended up exploiting victims and trying to settle a score no one asked them to do publicly. This film will be very triggering for some and may indeed be quite powerful for many but the filmmaker made it feel cheap and I don't know if anyone except the filmmaker got any resolve from this.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

12/11/23

Full Review

The S

What a difficult movie to make it through. I hate to say it but it genuinely feels like this movie was made as an opportunistic endeavor for the filmmaker. In the end, the only person really served was whoever sold this awful story to HBO. The victims weren't made whole, the family just seemed to take joy in serving up whatever punishment they felt they could serve to him. I certainly don't feel sympathy to the grandfather...we live in a hyperbolic society where if you're critical of one angle then you must be embracing the other angle and that's not what's going on. I just think the process of making this film drudged up lots of pain for everyone in the family from the victims to those who felt like victims just for being related to him. They also seemed to define themselves by his crimes so it's no wonder the pain lingered and hung over all of them. And again, I wager to say that no pain was relieved by making this documentary. It certainly didn't seem like it. Was just such an awful scene when after he died the granddaughter seemed so giddy about him dying alone and having his body donated. She wasn't even a victim so I guess it's hard to imagine feeling some kind of pleasurable rush or relief from hearing about your grandfather dying alone in a nursing home, only stopping by to get some footage of his suffering. Just sad all around, told a story about an awful human and the family who seemed to hang themselves on the cross for his sins and how they seemed to define themselves by the horrible crimes he committed. Just sad all around...no real catharsis, no real justice, no real anything but exposing a family's pain and suffering and kind of twisting the knife for whatever pain they feel they deserve for being related to him.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

12/11/23

Full Review

Amanda V

This documentary is not like most films surrounding sexual abuse in the sense that there is no satisfaction of true justice, transformative healing, or accountability. Unfortunately, this is a realistic depiction of what many abuse survivors' journeys look like.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

12/11/23

Full Review

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Rachel Beth Anderson

Director

Amanda Mustard

Director

Amanda Mustard

Self

Rachel Beth Anderson

Writer

Josef Beeby

Writer

Amanda Mustard

Writer

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Chris Vognar

Rolling Stone

A raw, hard-to-watch new HBO documentary that reminds us just how banal evil can be.

Dec 5, 2023

Full Review

Nina Metz

Chicago Tribune

The beauty of the film is that it doesn’t ask you to judge Debi or her mother, so much as to reckon with their complicity, which is fraught and messy and infuriating and tragic all at once.

Rated: 4/4

Dec 5, 2023

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Nick Schager

The Daily Beast

A gut-wrenching saga about illuminating the darkest corners of private lives, and about the difficulty—and perhaps unjustness—of genuine Christian forgiveness.

Dec 5, 2023

Full Review

Stephen Silver

The SS Ben Hecht

A disturbing but ultimately illuminating documentary about the legacy of sex abuse, and how it reverberates across generations

Rated: 4/5

Jan 1, 2024

Full Review

Alison Lanier

Pajiba

It’s the difficult work of true crime, dwelling with the harm done and reckoning with it in a way that is patient and non-superficial.

Dec 29, 2023

Full Review

Chase Hutchinson

Collider

To make such a deeply personal and often unflinching work about the abuse committed by a family member is no easy undertaking, though this devastating documentary does so with the necessary care for its subjects while still asking the essential questions.

Rated: 8/10

Dec 5, 2023

Full Review

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Synopsis

Amanda Mustard, a renowned photojournalist drawn to the power of truth-telling through the lens of her camera, returns home to Pennsylvania to investigate the multiple sexual abuse crimes committed by her grandfather. A visual whirlwind of memories from her family's archive unravels a world of secrets and help illustrate a granddaughter's unflinching attempt to disrupt a cycle of intergenerational trauma through the voices of the survivors and her grandfather himself. An eight-year cinematic journey with revealing interviews, archival photographs, and intimate home movies, GREAT PHOTO, LOVELY LIFE: FACING A FAMILY'S SECRETS documents a personal journey to not only uncover, but also understand the impact her grandfather, a local chiropractor, had on her family after committing decades of serial sexual abuse, and explores the complexities of the silence that followed. Through her emotionally raw quest to expose the truth, Mustard's investigation reveals decades of secrecy and coverups rooted in shame and self-deception and discovers the dysfunction lurking in her own family, eventually bringing her to uncomfortable and unexpected confrontations and reckonings. Finding the courage to dredge up painful memories, face her own feelings about her grandfather, and to have heartbreaking but healing conversations, Mustard explores the depth and breadth of her grandfather's actions, laying bare a path for the survivors to shed light on the abuse in order to make sense of the past, find peace in the present, and empower them to move forward.

Director: Rachel Beth Anderson, Amanda Mustard
Executive Producer: Nancy Abraham, Rachel Dretzin, Lisa Heller, Sara Rodriguez
Screenwriter: Rachel Beth Anderson, Josef Beeby, Amanda Mustard, Tyler H. Walk, Amanda Mustard, Rachel Beth Anderson, Tyler H. Walk, Josef Beeby
Distributor: HBO
Production Co: Ark Media, HBO Documentary Films
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Dec 5, 2023

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