Resynator
Directed by Alison Tavel
Written by Kathryn Robson and Alison Tavel
Starring Jon Anderson, Fred Armisen and Christian Castagno
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Available on demand

by Zakiyyah Madyun, Staff Writer

I will admit, my interest in Resynator was piqued by the mention of synths. I’m not a musician, but I love electronic music, and the clunky and charming aesthetics of the machine on the film poster made me want to learn more. That being said, Resynator is less a music documentary and more a journey of familial connection between director/star Alison Tavel, and her deceased father, Don. After uncovering Don’s hefty synthesizer, known as the Resynator, in her grandmother’s attic, Alison deftly navigates professional and personal relationships to get to the heart of who her father really was.

Alison never got to know Don, who died tragically in a car accident when she was only ten weeks old. His surviving relatives touted him as a genius, connecting him to music legends like Stevie Wonder and BB King while claiming that Don may have actually invented the first synthesizer. These bold claims leave Allison unpacking myth from matter through a rotating cast of friends, colleagues, family members, and even famous musicians with connections to Don.

The Resynator itself is a guitar synthesizer that is capable of mimicking the sound of other instruments. Innovative in its time, Allison discovers there truth in her father’s praise. Compared to the modern recording techniques of today’s world, it plays more as a novel relic than a technological marvel. The story opens up to not only who Don was, but who he could have been had his synth successfully gone into production.

There are parts of the story that ran a bit long, but Resynator drew me back in consistently with a surprising amount of discoveries and blunt revelations in Don’s story. Was his death really an accident, or had he been struggling with depression more insidious than his family members understood? Was he really a genius, or were his greatest achievements inflated for the sake of his daughter’s memory? Was he a kind father and husband, or did his ex-wife color over the history of an unsavory and maybe even painful marriage for the sake of her daughter’s memory? I was in utter shock at the amount of artifacts, from hand-written letters to receipts and photos, that were delivered (in surprisingly excellent condition) to Alison in her quest to understand Don. Diary entries of his childhood, and documents addressing both his marriage and relationship with Alison contributed to the refreshing honesty of the film. One of Resynator’s most interesting moments is when Alison makes a visit to her father’s identical twin brother, estranged from the family since Don’s passing. A perfect reflection of her father’s image had he still been alive today, this scene made for a surprisingly surreal moment in an otherwise grounded film.

As a viewer, I felt Alison’s frustration in prying the difficult details of Don’s life from his closest family members. I wonder, and will be left wondering, how many more pieces of the story we could have found with a director and interviewer fully removed from the situation. I would have liked to know if there were any other unseen threads of personality or quirks that connected her with her father. Somehow, despite following her journey for ninety-six minutes, I left the film ironically not knowing too much about Alison either.

That being said, Alison’s inclusion of herself in the narrative echoes her father’s dedication to his own project and is a vital aspect of the film. All in all, Resynator is a thorough and thoughtful mediation on a gadget of the past making its way into the future, and all the quirks and chaos of the man who created it. Bolstered by creative animated sequences and otherwise grounded camerawork, Resynator is a film I would recommend to anyone looking for a unique exploration of the ways our family members tend to find us long after they’re gone.

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