(L–R) Members of the Nakamura family and the crew of “Third Act” gather for the premiere at The Ray Theater in Park City. (Photo by Donyale West/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Jordan Crucchiola
Emotions are running high at the U.S. Documentary Competition premiere of Third Act before director Tadashi Nakamura even introduces his film, as programmer Sudeep Sharma welcomes the audience with a note about how personal Third Act feels to him. “I am going to try not to get emotional, but I think that this Festival has such a privilege to present films like this that speak to so many types of experiences,” Sharma says to the room. “But the Asian American experience is such a unique and powerful identity that many of us share, and I think that this film connects to it in a way that is really special and powerful.” With that, Sharma brings out the filmmaker.
“I’m just going to take a moment to soak this all in. This is awesome,” Nakamura says, pausing to look at the crowd as they reignite their applause. “It’s really surreal to be here with all of you. This has been a dream for so long. I’ve envisioned this exact moment, and today you will get to know four generations of my family and the different ways we’ve struggled to heal and find community in this racist and often brutal world. Hopefully you will see yourselves and your family reflected in our story, and hopefully you understand what this means for me to be here with my dad.”
Third Act is the story of Nakamura’s family, organized around the life and career of his father, the boundary breaking Asian American filmmaker Robert Nakamura, who became best-known for his 1980 film, Hito Hata: Raise The Banner. During World War II, Robert was sent with his family to one of ten American internment camps: Manzanar, in California. Their jailers did not care who was an American citizen — most were — and who was not; they all simply bore too strong a resemblance to the foreign enemy to live freely. Robert’s day-to-day memories of Manzanar are not all-together poor. He even found solace living among a community with others who looked just like him and experienced the U.S. just as he did. But the scars of alienation that came from being siloed in a desert prison, away from the fearful gaze of white America, changed him forever.
A project that began as a chronicle of “The Godfather of Asian American Cinema” turned into a story of fathers and sons. Third Act documents Tadashi coming to terms with his filmic inheritance as the Asian American Godfather’s son, and later as a son coming to terms with his dad’s Parkinson’s diagnosis. It documents Robert as he lays bare the anger he felt after internment, as a Japanese American; the resentment he felt at his father for being an obvious immigrant with a thick accent; the shame that followed for being so angry at his own dad; and how he eventually found community as an artist and an Asian American man among the creatives who would become his chosen kin. All along the way, we see Tadashi’s own small son, Prince, spend time with his grandpa and dad as they make what they assume will be one final collaboration together.
During the post-premiere Q&A, many Nakamura family members take to the front of the theater to join the film team. Tadashi explains that some crew who worked on Third Act were previously students of Robert’s at UCLA. Editor Victoria Chalk talked about the unique challenge of having such a vast reservoir of footage to draw from, both recorded over years by Tadashi for the documentary, as well as from the Nakamura’s combined family and professional archives.
Producer Eurie Chung, who has known Robert and Tadashi for more than 20 years, talks about the process of cajoling Tadashi to finish filming and finally make the movie, as Tadashi says he was using the process to escape from grieving his father’s diagnosis. In his mind, Tadashi could prolong Robert’s life if he prolonged the project, but Chung had to try and be more of a producer than a friend. “My whole life in LA from when I moved has been shaped by my experience with Tad and Bob,” Chung recalls of the Nakamuras, through tears. “I would lose my temper and be like, ‘We have to finish this film!’ And then I finally came to the realization that it took the exact amount of time that it needed to. Tad had to grow and get to a place where he wanted to finish the film. I’ve never worked on another film that felt like everything happened the way that it was supposed to, even when you didn’t think it [would].”
The most poignant moment, though, comes when Tadashi brings his parents, Robert and his mother, Karen Ishizuka, down before the crowd. After a long standing ovation, Tadashi says to his father, “I know you said the only reason why you’d make this film was to further my career. And, well, here we are! We did it!” Tadashi hugs his father as the crowd laughs, and as the applause dies down Ishizuka tells the audience that Robert wanted to address them all. She reads his remarks from a prepared statement:
“Although I had seen many assemblies and rough cuts over the past few years, I wanted to wait and see the final cut with all of you. I have to say, viewing it was like an end of life experience when you see your whole life flashing before your eyes. I’ll have to see it again to see if Tad got it right. This started out as such a simple project that to premiere it here at Sundance is beyond my wildest expectation. I just agreed to do it because Tad asked me to. I’m much more used to being on the other side of the camera, but as a documentary filmmaker I know what I want in a subject, so I tried to be that for Tad.”
Ishizuka continues, “Then about a year into making the film, something I never thought would happen, happened. It fundamentally changed the trajectory of the project. I knew that Parkinson’s wasn’t life-threatening but that it was incurable. At first I thought that I could beat it. Sometimes I still do… After I was diagnosed, for the first time I started thinking about the end of life, my mortality. Before the war I was the quintessential all-American kid, then one day after Pearl Harbor, I had the face of the enemy. That marked the beginning of a long, painful awakening to the duplicitous myth of the American dream.
“Now, at 88 [years old], the third act is for real, and this country is in the fight for its life. I realize that there are many films you could have chosen to see this afternoon, and I want to thank you all for being here with us in this once-in-a-lifetime moment… Like we all worked together for the sake of this film, now we must all work together like our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren, depend on it, so that the weight of this country doesn’t crush us.”
As many in the audience cry and try to hold back full sobs, Tadashi tearfully tells the room, “There was a point where I didn’t know if I was going to be able to finish this film and have him be here, and the fact that we’re all here together is really a dream come true.” He adds, “I feel really, really lucky to be with all of you tonight. I really appreciate watching films in a theater with people together. I think I took it for granted for a while, but it’s this unique moment where we’re all going to experience something together, especially here at Sundance. There’s such a magic to being here. I think this comes at a really crucial time, and I just feel like it’s very special for us to come here, to recover, to reflect, to share, and to remind ourselves why we do what we do, and why we need to keep doing it.”
