Sam Now (Reed Harkness, ITVS, 2023)

 I missed the initial broadcast of this film in May 2023 but glad it is now making the rounds. 

A full account of the film is here on the ITVS website: https://itvs.org/films/sam-now/

Shot over 25 years, this is a voyage of partial discovery by a Portland-based filmmaker Reed Harkness, for his step-mother Jois through his step-brother, Sam, and the intertwining relationships between families that were, that are, and that will be. 

The audience was very receptive to this story of what seems to be a normal family (for example Reed Harkness seems to get on well with his step brothers, and just about everyone else). But the film turns from a road movie looking for Jois after her sudden disappearance (it was voluntary so there is no criminality here), to a search for an explanation of why she left (she's alive and well and living with another man in Oregon). The discovery of reasons, characters and narrative seems deceptively "simple" but begs more questions than answers. Jois was a half Caucasian half Japanese born in Chitose (rural community in Japan) who was adopted by a Caucasian family who say they raised her like their other natural children. Jois' version is different and one of strict compliance against which she rebelled, much to the enduring discontent of the foster parents - the mother for example says she does not regard her as a daughter any longer. The only evident foster family trait that seems to have rubbed off on Jois is to keep her secrets to herself.

Jois herself is an interesting study. Later in life she thought of looking for her birth mother and learned that sometime after her adoption, her mother married and moved to the US. However she consciously did not make an effort to connect, a dose of reality in a world where TV and movies assume that adoptees want to find and connect with their birth parents. 

Much of Jois' story is left uncovered - probably a mixture of Jois's own reticence, and the filmmaker's main focus on Sam's search. Sam shows a vacillating attitude towards his mother. He sometimes needs her and is angry at her absence. This lack of maternal love has led to some character flaws (such as the treatment of girl friends) that he has tried to overcome. Towards the end of the film we see that he (is partnered with an Asian girlfriend which reminds us that he is a quarter Japanese - something that is never dealt with in the film.

So the whole story is not without interest though it sometimes walks the fine line between family home movie history, and the universal essences of a narrative that strangers would find worth following. It's worth noting that the skilful editing has generally avoided this risk.

Apart from the story though, what is very interesting is that this is a film where the filmmaker himself has a direct and personal stake. And that stake is expressed more through the use of cinema than a simple documentary narrative. So I take it that the film reflects some of the filmmaker's thoughts on cinema or its impact on him. As a teenager growing up in Palo Alto in the 1980s, Harkness (in a Q&A) said he frequented his local video store and watched as much (US) indie cinema as he could. For him it was the era of Jim Jarmusch, Harmony Korine et al. These are not necessarily reflective films but certainly reflections of growing up, an enduring theme in the first few films of many indie filmmakers around the world but in the case of US indies of the 1980s, often infused with a sense of irony, of the question: "how did I end up here?"

Harkness was making super 8 and 16 mm films since his teenage years when he found an old super 8 camera in his dad's garage. It seems there was about 24 hours worth of super 8 film alone, and probably hours more of VHS footage. He is known in the Pacific Northwest for making the teenage (and beyond) action type home movies starring his step brother Sam as "The Blue Panther." These were shown in a Super 8 club in Seattle in the 1980s/90s (as I understand it). A number of "The Blue Panther" films - especially those in color - were shot on 16mm. On the basis of the clips included in the documentary the films veer between amateurish to inventive spoofs (one advantage: his half-brother Sam was good at falling down and around so could do some kind of stunts).

All this footage gives the film a compelling texture - from partly grainy black and white super 8 to glitchy VHS, and a little smoother 16 mm as well as current day polished digital footage. It's practically a history of film/video formats from the late 20th century to now. 

That at first would seem peripheral to the main story of the family but like all characteristics of a contemporary medium (film, video in our time/ novels, paintings in previous centuries), memories are formed by the format in which we choose to preserve them. So the memories presented by Harkness are not only original to his own lived experience but also a currency in which to trade with others. And like many first feature films, his story ends on a beach by the water. The most famous film to present this motif is Truffaut's "400 Blows" where a young Jean-Pierre Leaud stares out at the sea facing an uncertain future, a roiling sea that could presage his life to come. And so it is with "Sam Now" that ends with Harkness and Sam playing around on the beach but seemingly without real direction, and a future whose uncertainty is masked by the clear blue sky above.