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Morgan Dews’ Must Read After My Death has been compared to a confessional real-life classic like Capturing the Friedmans (2003), though there is not in Must Read the spicy suspicion of child molestation that made the movie about the Friedmans such a sensational nonfiction success. Mr. Dews is the grandson of a twice-married woman named Allis, who, through the ’50s and ’60s, kept copious records on film and through dictaphone of her faltering marriage to a man named Charley, and the devastating effect it had on their four children, Anne, Bruce, Chuck and Douglas. Psychiatrists were called in, and Bruce was briefly institutionalized.

What is unusual about all the material compiled, organized and preserved by the filmmaker’s grandmother is that there seems to have been no attempt to censor the family’s violent feelings during the stormy years of the marriage. Every psyche is laid bare for our perusal, and often, the family members scream at each other on tape; at one point one of the boys shouts that he is going to kill the father for constantly belittling his mother.

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