Seen film review: when bad parents go good

Seen, the new Australian parenting documentary by Hailey Bartholomew, confirms certain truths while confounding others. But certainly, whether we are one or not, whether we’ve had them or not, the looming figure of the parent is inescapable in our lives.

But what does it mean to be a great parent? Psychiatrists and psychologists will introduce you to the idea of a ‘good enough’ parent – the thinking being that no one gets it right all the time, but if, on balance, you are providing your offspring with more love, consistency and sensible boundaries than not, then they and you should turn out all right.

Watch the Seen trailer.

Of course, the very best parents, with the best advice and the most foolproof ideas of how to parent, are those who simply haven’t tried it yet. Everyone else knows full well that whatever you do, something will be wrong – that frequently you are damned if you do, and equally damned if you don’t.

Aside from the ‘good enough’ parent, however, there are those who could clearly be doing it better, and a new film from an outfit called Parent TV looks at four different parents (Terry Downes, Anne Unwin, Zidia Valdebenito and Joe Williams) who have recognised the failures of their past, addressed their behaviours and beliefs, and are now reconnecting with their children in all new and improved ways.

Former rugby league player and Wiradjuri/Wolgalu man Joe Williams has five children, but says that while he has been a father for 18 years, he has been a ‘dad’ for only a fraction of that time. The high life of the NRL meant that his relationship with his children from an earlier relationship was deeply fractured, but a whole heap of soul-searching and recognising and dealing with such issues as bipolar disorder means the parent he is today is a completely different one to how he was a decade ago.

Hearing from Williams is terrific, but it’s the testimony of his two older children that really gives the film the gut punch.

Seen: unflinching

All four interview subjects are unflinchingly honest about their own pasts and wayward approaches to parenting and they have wonderful heartfelt advice and experience to share. Scattered among the interviews are nuggets of advice and analysis from a panel of experts, including educators like Maggie Dent and Lael Stone, and neuroscience specialists like Nathan Walls and Selena Bartlett.

Of course, this is one of those topics where few are immune, so even the so-called experts are able to offer their own tales of missteps and flawed parenting strategies.

The film could perhaps have worked just as well without some of the more obvious and perhaps a touch clumsy reconstructions, but the undoubted heart and children-first approach of the whole project can’t be faulted.

Perhaps you’ll sit there watching it, thinking, ‘Oh, rookie error! I’d never make that mistake when parenting my children and teens.’ But if that is you, watch out as your hubris sends you sprawling, because you can bet your bottom dollar that if you’re not making that particular mistake, it’s simply because you’re too busy making a completely different one…

Seen will have a staggered Australian and NZ release from 2 March 2025. See the Seen website for more details.

More from Madeleine Swain on ScreenHub:

One Mind, One Heart film review: Larissa Behrendt documentary hits home

Tracing the history of the struggle for Indigenous Land Rights is a big ask in a single stand-alone documentary. Part of the story was explored, of course, in the landmark seven-part SBS series First Australians created by Rachel Perkins and released in 2008.

That series stretched back to 1788, but ended, however, with Koiki Mabo’s pivotal and successful legal challenge to the doctrine of terra nullius in 1993.

Without the luxury of 420 minutes to tell her story, Larissa Behrendt, on the other hand, has set herself some different parameters. One Mind, One Heart covers an extended period – 1963 up to the present day – but it does so through the framework of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions.’ Read more …