Great Photo, Lovely Life – Review

The film was screened at the 21st Tallgrass Film Festival.

Secrets kept close and snapshots of joy plague almost every family in America. These things are the realities we display to people, a picture on Instagram of your joyous family without letting anyone see the darker tensions beneath. Some of these secrets and contextual instances can affect generations, abusers and addicts passing on their deeds to children and grandchildren. Pain can create ripples that are visible quite far out, no matter whether or not you saw what hit the water’s surface.

Photojournalist Amanda Mustard comes from a family with a secret. There was always a discomfort, the thing joked about to lighten the tension or ignored to preserve safety. Her grandfather, Bill Flickinger, was a chiropractor in Pennsylvania, moving from town to town as his secret got him in trouble. Bill was attracted to very young girls, noted in the documentary as young as four years old and up, and he seemed to not feel any remorse over this fact. When Bill’s wife, Amanda’s grandmother, died this fresh documentarian began combing through old images. She looked into the still photography and video records of her family’s pastimes and discovered something buried for so many years.

While it’s a very hard watch I think Mustard’s debut film is a triumph. It threads the needle on multiple topics that would be impossible in the hands of anyone outside the situation or lacking the same bravery as the filmmaker. The documentary deals with some very aggressive topics that will trigger a multitude of individuals but it goes beyond just discussing pedophilia (a word that has lost all meaning in the age where social media warriors throw it at anything that moves). Great Photo, Lovely Life is a harsh look at the reality we all face in social groups that normalize any form of abuse.

This film is deceptively kind to its subject while painting him in the most honest light possible. It’s hard not to see Bill Flickinger as a human being because he’s portrayed as one. Most documentaries, news pieces, or social media posts would paint him as a monster. What he’s done is monstrous, yes, but that never takes away from the fact that he is a full person, with a unique personality and set of emotions. His first few spoken words in Great Photo, Lovely Life are unnerving as hell and make sure the audience knows exactly what they’re in for. It only gets harder from these opening moments that serve as a very blunt trigger warning. Bill will say things and behave in ways that are going to make you uncomfortable. You should be, but his humanization makes the case that more than ever we need mental help availability to help some of these people before they begin their deeds.

The subject matter is captured in an oddly beautiful way. The photographs themselves are mostly incredible to look at, the video footage fun and grainy (and with an undertone that makes it feel like at any moment this will turn into Scott Derrickson’s Sinister), and the way Mustard and co-director Rachel Beth Anderson (First to Fall, Unschooled) bring these images to you is breathtaking. The photos, animated like shuffling cards and then spread out to give an overview of the time period in question, are something you might feel the urge to screenshot and pick through later for clues. The video footage is projected over a room with furniture in it, the wall holding the footage up. This room is not unlike a room everyone has been in. Whether it be your grandparents’ house, your own family home, or even just your own living space, this specific American iconography places the footage in a comforting setting and reminds the audience that every family has something they hide.

Great Photo, Lovely Life is going to be a hard watch for most, nigh-on impossible for some. Culpability is taken into account, with multiple of Amanda’s family members citing each other’s decisions as a reason this was allowed to continue. “I felt like I was trying to tell the world, but no one was listening,” says Angie, Amanda’s older sister. Flickinger did not limit himself to people outside the family and the willful silence on the part of multiple relatives is called out for allowing their children to be subject to the man’s abuse. It is not taken well, and that is maybe the most natural thing in the world. For both survivors of abuse and those who turned a blind eye…this is going to sting.

Amanda Mustard’s debut film is a masterpiece. Its core message is that we need to be talking about things. What traumatized you won’t be fixed if you don’t deal with it. Mustard has taken a very bold step and placed her family trauma out there for the world to see and I think it’s such a helpful thing for those willing to engage with it. Trauma needs to be talked about and abusers told of the damage they’ve done. There is no giving it to God, no letting it go, and certainly no healing without confrontation. That’s the ultimate stamp that Great Photo, Lovely Life left on me. It’s tattooed on my brain, a difficult and often painful thought that a very brave director put out into the world, and I’m all the better for it.

Great Photo, Lovely Life will premier on Max towards the end of 2023.

If you have suffered from abuse and need help please go through this list and find care. If you are suffering from an attraction to minors please visit Help Wanted Prevention.

These links and other information can be found on the film’s website.