When he was nineteen, Jeremiah Zagar began to film his father, Philadelphia mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar. He continued to follow him around with a camera for seven years for what became the documentary In a Dream.
Jeremiah set out to capture his parents’ love, which is the creative force at the source of their family and their art. Then, one day, as they go to pick up Jeremiah’s brother from rehab, his parents’ forty-three-year relationship crumbles. Seemingly out of nowhere, Isaiah admits, on camera, that he has been having an affair with his assistant for years.
In a Dream, which has won multiple awards on the festival circuit, resonates far beyond the specifics of the Zagars’ story. Their marriage is in some ways quite traditional; it is the core of a nuclear family, but their love also comes across as an unconventional artistic endeavor by two freethinking people.The film examines the dysfunction and self-mythologizing inherent to love and family. It’s also, ultimately, a comforting film that leaves you believing in love in a way a romantic comedy never could. — Sarah Clyne Sundberg
You started filming In a Dream when you were nineteen. What did you think you were doing when you began?
I had no idea. I was really young and came home for the summer. My mother said, “Why don’t you film your father?” He and I went down to West Virginia together and did these very intimate interviews. From those interviews it was clear that the movie would be about a man who wanted to make sense out of his memories. It was also going to be a love story.
Why do you think your mother wanted you to film your father?
I think she just wanted us to be closer. Everyone in our family respects the opinion of my mother. If she asks you to film your father, you do it. I think her intuition is based a lot on family. She wants to keep her family together.
In one sense the film is a very specific love story: one person, one family. But it’s also universal. I think many people come to a point growing up where their parents become real people.
Certainly that happened with my father. That part of the movie wasn’t intentional. You view your parents as mountains, then at a certain point you see them as people. Though my mother will always remain a mountain for me, I can see her humanity too. It is very clear, when my father left her, how fragile and lost she was. It’s wild to watch your parents disintegrate and become people. I’m lucky that I didn’t have to experience it until I was nineteen years old, because some children experience it when they are six or seven.
You barely appear in the film. Was the camera a buffer?
The camera is a shield, a way to be with people without breaking down emotionally. Without it I would never have been able to suffer my parents. My father is exhausting. With the camera it becomes something you’re doing. There were moments when I would start to cry and I would take the camera away and then I would take the camera back.
Did your family behave differently because you were filming?
Differently and awkwardly are two separate things. In the beginning my father behaved awkwardly. Eventually the camera became a character in itself. As opposed to making things unnatural, it brought out his honesty. That is true of my mother and my brother too. When the camera was on it was like there was a questioning force in front of them, someone asking them to be intimate, to be honest, to be real, to not pretend.
Did it ever catalyze situations?
I don’t think my father would ever have told my mother he was cheating on her that day, if there hadn’t been a camera there. Whether it made me question him, or simply was an unbiased eye looking directly at him, I don’t know, but I doubt he would have spoken otherwise.
Have your parents seen the movie?
Oh yes. My parents are big fans. In the end it is a beautiful representation of the two of them coming through. [Though] my mother doesn’t like to watch it. Neither do I. [My father] called me the other day. I heard the end credits playing in the background. I said, “Dad, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m watching the movie.” I said, “You’re watching the movie? Again? Well, what’s it like?” He said. “It’s really good, I like the characters.”
At one point it says “Part 2: The end of an era.”
The “era” is the belief in the strength and perfection of the family structure. No longer is the family invincible, we understand that our family is fragile and that we need to work on holding on to each other. I think every family needs to realize that at some point. It is the same thing with The Godfather, essentially.
Your mother, Julia, says at one point, “I lost my whole belief system.”
If we are built from memories, then we are also built from each other. You spend your whole life building something with someone, forty-two years. All your memories are constituted of that person, and when that person leaves you it is going to break you.
Was there anything that anyone told you that really shocked you or surprised you?
Yes, and a lot of it isn’t in the movie. There are certain sexual things that my parents told me that I never want to hear again. At a certain point you ask them anything and they are going to tell you anything. My mother told me about my father’s inability to please her at certain points in her life. I wasn’t shocked by the idea, but I was shocked that she would tell me. She even said, “I don’t think you want to hear this.”
Were you surprised when your father revealed his history as the victim of sexual abuse to you?
I was surprised by the way he told it. I had never seen him register the pain of the moment before. I’ve heard him tell the story before, but not like that. [He'd always told it] like it was a joke. I’d never heard it like it meant something.
What was it like to ask about your father’s sexuality?
It was exciting. It is important to see your parents as human beings and an exciting process for a child to go through. Parts were terrifying. It is important to know that your parents are as fragile as you and that you can achieve what they can achieve. Or less. They are your strength and your weakness.
Had you seen the old Super-8 footage before?
I’d never seen any of it. My father said, “I have seventeen books of slides in the closet” or “I think there are a couple of movies about us from the ’70s that people made.” He has 40,000 square feet [of art] that people see every day. But he has warehouses full that no one will ever see. He has notebooks with drawings stacked up to the ceiling. I can’t even explain to you. There are stacks and stacks of rolls of paintings.
There are these scenes where it looks as if he is walling himself in with his enormous mosaics.
That’s what we wanted to communicate. It can either be a prison or it can be a paradise.
Was there anything you struggled with whether to include?
Because the film had to revolve around the love story, there was a lot of stuff that I lost of him as a youth that I love. [And] there is a scene that I called “Paints on Ceilings” that I ended up making into a short film. He is describing how he began painting as a child. He was drawing in his coloring book and then he decided that the lines were too binding, so he started to draw on the table and the refrigerator and the ceiling. Then his mother’s scream was suddenly the catalyst for him to become an artist. He was so excited after she screamed that he decided that he wanted to draw everywhere and make the world scream.
It’s like Harold and the Purple Crayon.
My father’s story is totally like Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Is there anything that is in the movie that you were on the fence about including?
The shit scene. My editor, who really brought out the beautiful soul of the movie, said, “That scene makes your father very unlikeable. How can you relate to somebody who shits in their own hand?” I thought, if you don’t like him after that, you are not going to like him at all. It is one of those things that are so emblematic of who he is. He is someone who finds beauty in the most horrible things.
You come away from it feeling that there is love in the world.
You want to let people know that. It’s not so neat and tidy, but it is possible.
IN A DREAM: Theatrical Trailer from Herzliya Films on Vimeo.
In a Dream premieres at Cinema Village this Friday, 4/10. Jeremiah Zagar and subjects Isaiah and Julia Zagar will appear at 8:00pm & 10:00pm showings on Friday. Special appearance by director Jeremiah Zagar at 8:00pm & 10:00pm showings on Saturday, 4/11.