X
  • 2009
  • Gigantic Releasing
  • 1 h 13 m
  • 2009
  • Gigantic Releasing
  • 1 h 13 m

Summary When a Hartford couple turns to psychiatry for help with their marriage in 1960, things quickly spiral out of control. Couples counseling, individual and group therapy and 24-hour marathon sessions ensue. Their four children suffer and are given their own psychiatrists. Pills are prescribed, people are institutionalized, shock-therapy is...

Directed By: Morgan Dews

Written By: Morgan Dews

  • 2009
  • Gigantic Releasing
  • 1 h 13 m
  • 2009
  • Gigantic Releasing
  • 1 h 13 m

Must Read After My Death

Metascore Generally Favorable Based on 12 Critic Reviews
75
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Summary When a Hartford couple turns to psychiatry for help with their marriage in 1960, things quickly spiral out of control. Couples counseling, individual and group therapy and 24-hour marathon sessions ensue. Their four children suffer and are given their own psychiatrists. Pills are prescribed, people are institutionalized, shock-therapy is...

Directed By: Morgan Dews

Written By: Morgan Dews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 12 Critic Reviews
75
83% Positive
10 Reviews
17% Mixed
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 12 Critic Reviews
75
83% Positive
10 Reviews
17% Mixed
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
90
At its heart, and there is a great heart to be discovered here, Morgan Dews' documentary Must Read After My Death is a searing and intimate account of an unconventional woman struggling not to lose her identity or her sanity in the rigid 1950s suburban world of stay-at-home moms, well-behaved children and sparkling-clean houses.
FULL REVIEW
83
Dews perhaps makes too much of the notion that Allis was a woman out of her time – a feminist precursor. This is too sociological a formulation for such a patently psychological crisis.
By Peter Rainer FULL REVIEW
80
Intensely compelling documentary.
By Elizabeth Weitzman FULL REVIEW
80
The secrets revealed here are not quite as shocking as the hints of child molestation captured in "Friedmans." Still, this is an equally intriguing and unsettling look at the turmoil hidden behind the white picket fences of suburbia.
FULL REVIEW
75
As with "Capturing the Friedmans," the documentary is grueling to sit through. Yet the greasy, guilty thrill of being privy to your neighbors' most intimate dramas makes it impossible to stop watching.
By Kyle Smith FULL REVIEW
70
Horror and social value contend for equal honors in Must Read After My Death, a frightening -- and eerily edifying -- documentary that Morgan Dews created from a family trove of photos, Dictaphone letters, audiotapes, voluminous transcripts and home movies.
By Joe Morgenstern FULL REVIEW
60
Dews helps Allis hold out a gendered posthumous snapshot of an era whose smug surface, barely masking oceans of suffering, makes "Revolutionary Road" look like a tea party.
FULL REVIEW

User Reviews

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Details

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Production Company Allis and Charley
Release Date Feb 20, 2009
Duration 1 h 13 m
Genres
Website http://www.mustreadaftermydeath.com/
View All Details

Awards

International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra Punto de Vista
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille (FIDMarseille)
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
Doclisboa International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination

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