Sensitive and surprising, Reed Harkness’s documentary follows the reverberations in his family after their mother abruptly departs.
At the heart of the disarming documentary “Sam Now” is the challenge of coming to terms with familial pain. The director, Reed Harkness, traces how his younger brother Sam and other relatives coped with the abrupt departure of their mother, Jois. Drawing on friendly but frank interviews and 25 years of home-movie adventures shot by Reed with Sam, it’s a film whose emotional reality seems to evolve before your eyes.
Jois left without a word just as Sam was starting high school, baffling him and sending another teenage brother, Jared, into a spiral. Their caring father, Randy, joins the rest of the Northwest-based family in moving on rather than hashing out the past. Reed’s musing voice-over and interviews are broken up by the cartoonish superhero capers that Reed shot with the then-cheery Sam.
Paired with garage rock, this approach risks becoming precious, but instead, the movie deepens in complexity as Reed intervenes. He urges Sam to search for Jois, and, instead of a peekaboo mystery, she turns up, happy and not especially regretful. She explains why she left, and — as the movie jumps forward in years — we see how her hard-to-accept decision reverberates for Sam and Jared as adults.
Observantly edited, the movie mingles the perspectives of many family members without casting judgment, developing an aching poignancy that recalls recent family dramas like “Aftersun” and “Return to Seoul.” Reed’s initial overeager stylings fall back to reveal a mature reckoning with love, hurt, independence, and hard-won wisdom.
Sam Now
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
