Critic Reviews

Through Glassman’s diligent and empathetic investigations, it becomes a film of documents, in which the aura of the letters—the worlds that they contain in their text and evoke in their sheer physical presence—generates overwhelming emotional power.

Dear Mr. Brody invites timely thoughts about the wealthy and income disparity.

As with his 2016 documentary “Tower,” which recounted a 1966 mass shooting in Texas, director Maitland is most concerned with those whose stories get buried beneath the headlines.

Concurrently, as Maitland provides pockets of warmth and humanity in the legacies of a handful of letter-writers, he relays through archival footage and interviews the fallout for Brody himself when the sheer volume of outstretched hands and scrutinizing eyes became too much for him to handle.

It is nothing less than a tapestry detailing the human desire for, yes, money, but more importantly, for connection.

What Maitland does do to separate his film from other docs that rely on that structure is weave dramatization into documentation, breathing life into the woeful stories and dashed dreams of men, women and children mailing their pleas for relief to Michael Brody Jr. at the edge of desperation.

The film poignantly draws a straight line from the economic anxieties of the past straight to the present.

Dear Mr. Brody does a fine job of showing how the financial chasm between rich and poor people is as wide and insurmountable today as it was in 1970.

The heir himself turned out to be a naïve and troubled young man, though Strickland leaves his particular fate a mystery until the final moments of the film. What's in between is unevenly executed but still compelling: a far-out cautionary tale of money, media, and gonzo idealism gone wrong.