The title of “Tell Them Who You Are” comes from an anecdote told by Pamela Yates, a friend of the film’s director, Mark Wexler, who as a small boy had approached a group of adults shyly and been admonished by his father: “Tell them who you are.”

“What he meant,” says Ms. Yates, “was ‘Tell them you’re the son of Haskell Wexler.'”

That might not mean anything elsewhere, but in Hollywood Haskell Wexler is a name to conjure with. The two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer enjoys almost legendary status there for his work on such films as Elia Kazan’s “America, America” (1963), Tony Richardson’s “The Loved One” (1965), Mike Nichols’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966), Norman Jewison’s “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), George Lucas’s “American Graffiti” (1973), Hal Ashby’s “Bound for Glory” (1976), and many others.

Yet for all the great directors under whom he worked, Mr. Wexler tells his son’s camera that “I don’t think there’s been a movie I’ve been on that I didn’t think I could direct it better.”

There is no irony, no twinkle in the eye or tongue in the cheek when he says that. This is not a man subtly to deflate his own arrogance and pomposity. On the contrary, he is a mean, nasty, manipulative SOB, and the only way his son can deal with how that must make him feel is to hope that we, like him, will somehow learn to love him for it.

A selling point of the movie, according to its publicists, is that Wexler Senior is an old-time Hollywood radical, known for such highly political movies as “Medium Cool” (1969), “Introduction to the Enemy” (1974), and “Latino” (1985), all of which he directed, while his son, the director of “Tell Them Who You Are,” is a conservative.

Or a sort of conservative. At least he is proud of having done a documentary about Air Force One and getting a signed photograph from the elder George Bush. This prompts his father to observe that his son’s “whole fight in life is to say he is more important than me.”

In other words, the emotional gap between them makes the political one look trivial.

The most revealing scene in the picture comes after father and son have driven together to San Francisco for an anti-war rally. Afterward, father summons son to his hotel room because he has something to tell him. Mark comes into the room with a camera and suggests that they go out onto the balcony to get the sunset and the city of San Francisco in the background.

“What I have to say is more important than the image,” says Haskell.

“But could we just see the city,” pleads Mark.

“I want to say something for your f–ing movie,” says Haskell, growing more angry.

“Could we just walk outside for a second,” Mark repeats.

“You’re telling me what the film is about?”

“No, I just want to shoot the background that I want to shoot.”

“Is this content or picture? I want to say something and if you can’t respect that immediately it puts why we’re making this film into question.”

“I just want to get the sun setting.”

“Bull– on the sun setting! This isn’t a f–ing Miller Beer commercial. This is your father talking about something that’s important to him. …What’s important here is that I, the star of your f–ing movie, desperately want to say something about what today has meant to me and why I went up here to San Francisco on this peace march. Now if that is not important to you or is in balance for you with the f–ing sunset, then I might as well hang up my jockstrap.”

If Haskell Wexler’s performance in that little scene strikes you as it does me, as not only extremely hostile and deeply unattractive but also hilariously funny, you might wonder that Mark seems to go out of his way not to notice either the hostility or the humor. Again and again his father belittles him to his own camera. Even when he seems to be unwontedly humble, he uses it to stick the boot in.

“Maybe I would have been a better father if I knew what I know now; maybe you wouldn’t have turned out to be such a mess.”

At one point, Mark tells his father that one of his most painful early memories was when he told him that he thought him stupid. In fact, Mark says, he remembers a great many occasions on which Haskell had pronounced that other people, particularly the directors he worked with, were similarly afflicted.

There is a pause, and for a second or two we allow ourselves to wonder if, at last, Haskell is touched with remorse about something he has done to his son. Then he says: “You know why that was, Mark? Because mostly they were.” And when Mark seems as taken aback as we are by this reference to a number of the most prominent directors in Hollywood, he elaborates: “Stupid.”

Over this and other examples of toxic parenting, the healing balm of psychobabble is poured by, of all people, Jane Fonda, who had collaborated with the elder Mr. Wexler on “Introduction to the Enemy” and “Coming Home.” “For the men of our fathers’ generation,” she tells young Mark, “intimacy was not their gift.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. Miss Fonda of course learned her own forbearance through her experience of an emotionally remote and difficult father, but at least Henry Fonda was spared the humiliation of having his personal unpleasantness recorded for the world to see by the child he had wronged.