Movie Review of the Documentary In A Dream

Jeremiah’s Zagar’s New Doc Profiles His Artist Father Isaiah

Apr 2, 2009

Despite severe emotional problems, Isaiah Zagar has created 50,000 square feet of mosaic murals in his south Philadelphia neighborhood.

In a Dream was screened at its Florida Premiere in the American Independent Competition at the 2009 Florida Film Festival.

Reality can be quite painful for Isaiah Zagar, the artist portrayed in the documentary In A Dream. Directed by Isaiah’s younger son, Jeremiah Zagar, the film takes the audience back in time to some of the traumas and identity issues that haunt the artist – and simultaneously fuel his creative energy. The documentary also firmly establishes the present, Isaiah’s senior years when he has created stunning mosaics and paintings throughout his home and his neighborhood in Philadelphia.

The viewer glimpses his disintegrating family, in which the older son Ezekiel has separated from his wife and acquired a serious drug addiction. Amidst the chaos of drug rehabilitation, the family also learns that infidelity threatens to destroy Isaiah and his wife, Julia. The camera follows the beauty of art being created alongside the ugliness of a family being destroyed, in part through the instability of the artist himself.

Jeremiah Zagar Behind the Camera

Throughout it all, Jeremiah keeps a steady (camera) eye on the action, not shying away from difficult subjects such as his father’s strange rantings, suicide attempt, childhood abuse, and preoccupation with fecal matter. Indeed, Isaiah says he finds human excrement just as beautiful as the luscious colors of his paints and the vibrant mosaic tiles. He also appears to have an obsession with the naked body, and exposes himself in front of the camera with surprising lack of inhibition.

Beneath all the bizarre antics, however, there’s the art. Isaiah’s boldly colored, beautifully detailed mosaics depict the important people, events, and feelings that have shaped his life. Told sensitively by a loving son, the film unflinchingly reveals the darker side of the Zagar family, along with some of its highlights as well.

The Link Between Mental Illness and Creative Genius

This certainly isn’t the first film to explore the link between mental illness and creative genius. For instance, director Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind and Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston also examine this subject.

Even though Zagar doesn’t really add any new insight into this strange connection between altered (and seemingly opposite) states of mind in which one destroys and one creates, In A Dream tells its own unique story with it own cast of eccentric characters. And it’s a story worth telling.

The copyright of the article Movie Review of the Documentary In A Dream in Biographical Documentaries is owned by Leslie C. Halpern. Permission to republish Movie Review of the Documentary In A Dream in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.