ATLFF 2025: Third Acts, Long Goodbyes, and Honoring Parents : Sonic Cinema

ATLFF 2025: Third Acts, Long Goodbyes, and Honoring Parents

Posted by Brian Skutle Posted on Apr - 28 - 2025 0 Comment

I normally do not write actual reviews in this space, but this is the second such time I’ve been inspired to in a few months, and truthfully, I should have seen it coming.

When I plan out my schedule for the 2025 Atlanta Film Festival- or any film festival- my in-person screenings have a lot to do with A) whether I’ll be able to attend in person at that time; B) if interview possibilities might be available, and C) how interested I am in the movie. That last one seems like an obvious requirement, but the truth is, when you have multiple venues, and multiple screenings going on concurrently, what you want to see most with an audience matters. (Also, what might be available via screener or the virtual platform factors in, as well.) Tadashi Nakamura’s documentary, “Third Act”, was immediately on my radar, in part because he was making a film about his father, Robert A. Nakamura, a significant figure in Asian American cinema. I have not seen any of Nakamura’s films, but after this film, I will definitely be seeking out what I can.

But it isn’t Tadashi’s exploration of his father’s career that inspired this particular post. This was a film years in the making, and in it, we learn that the elder Nakamura has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a debilitating neurodegenerative disease. As a result, “Third Act” isn’t just a look at his father’s life and career, but also a chance for his father to impart wisdom, life lessons, and reveal painful truths before he is unable to so anymore, and a chance for a son to have a part in how his father is remembered. Recently, I was in charge of doing the same for my mother, and that is what led to a larger post for Nakamura’s film.

(For the record, Robert is still alive, as of the film’s Atlanta screening, and he was able to watch the film’s premiere at Sundance.)

As I mentioned in my curtain raiser for this year’s festival, I was not quite sure what my coverage of the festival was going to be like after we were told by hospice that my mother had weeks left to live. On March 29, she passed away after a long bout with dementia, and two years after she had been diagnosed with cancer. That did mean that I was going to be able to cover the festival more fully, but it also meant that I had to plan her memorial service. I’ve been to too many over the years, for all of my grandparents; my father; a friend from Boy Scouts; a friend’s son’s service, and in early 2023, my mother-in-laws, so I had a rough idea of how to plan in out, but I wanted to do something more than just give a eulogy and play some songs she liked. I wanted it to be an opportunity to flip the script on what her last years were like, that gave her a chance to be remembered for some of the things she loved, and thankfully, I had some of the materials to do that.

Like Tadashi, I am very much a child cut from the same cloth as my parents. In the film, it’s interesting how Tadashi at first wanted to do something separate from what his father did, and yet- in the end- he himself is also a filmmaker. A funny thing about life- what we sometimes find that we want to do in it is not necessarily the same thing life has in store for us. Him turning to filmmaking himself would have made sense if he had started there, but by doing so later, it almost feels like something fated for him for this moment. I will admit that I had never heard of his father before this film, but the glimpses of his work- with so much of it focused on the Japanese internment camps during WWII (which Robert and his family were in while he was a child)- has me compelled to search it out, especially as our modern political climate has us headed in a similar direction again with people of color our political leaders don’t like. Being in the camps was a foundational part of Robert’s life, and throughout the film, we see father and son go on many trips to Manzanar, the historical site of the camp he was at. For Robert, it’s a chance to reflect on where he’s been, and who he is now, as well as pass that history on to his son (as well as his grandson, who joins them on a trip late in the film), and seeing the site ourselves onscreen, it’s surreal to think that something like that happened here. It should not be surprising, as racism is baked deep into the American experience.

One of the most poignant moments in the film is when Robert talks about his own attempts to make a movie about HIS father, and- knowing what he knows now- what he would have done differently. Robert says something to the effect of, “Less story, more soul.” Tadashi has a tall order in “Third Act” to do that for his father, while also honoring his place in cinema history, and as an activist for Asian Americans, while also showing him as a human being, a husband, a father and a grandfather. Not an enviable task, and certainly not one that is easy to accomplish when you are also having to struggle with the truth that your father won’t be around forever, especially as you have the reality that their passing will be quick, but also take its time by the nature of their disease. No losing a loved one is easy, but watching their health deteriorate is not a path one wants for anyone. We leave “Third Act” aware that Robert’s third act was not done yet, but it was closer to the end than the beginning. Regardless of when Robert passes, Tadashi has crafted a beautiful tribute to his father.

As I first began informing friends and loved ones of what was going on with mom, one of the first people I told was our former pastor. She was one of the ministers at the Presbyterian church we started to attend when we moved down to Georgia in 1988, and she’s been a family friend ever since. She’s been with me every step of the way with this process with mom, and she knows the emotional toll becoming my mom’s caregiver has had on me. In our chat, she mentioned that I’d been “saying goodbye for years,” and that is very true. Dementia is a cruel disease, because even if the body is still capable, the mind is not. At the start, it was a balancing act from day to day, and week to week, to see where her memory was going to be at, as well as her personality. While looking at pictures from that first year since her diagnosis, you can sometimes see the physical changes in appearance that go with the onset of a degenerative disease, it was her mind that exhibited the most changes. She would lose thoughts and pivot to different ones quickly, she would be more irritable, and she was quick to anger. One Sunday, we talked briefly on the phone, and the next morning, she was angry that we hadn’t “spoken for weeks.” She lived on her own before we finally got her in memory care in 2021, and when she needed toilet paper and paper towels, I had some delivered, but she didn’t notice them in the hallway, and yelled that I needed to get them over for her now. When I arrived, she was furious, but as soon as I pointed out that there was some in the hallway, her demeanor turned on a dime, and she was sorry. After she had gotten in memory care, there was one afternoon during a visit where we had a drag out verbal fight, after which I truly did not visit her for a month; I was just not in a mental state to subject myself to that again. When the cancer diagnosis happened in early 2023, and we opted not to do chemo after it spread, it put a rough time frame for how much time she had left, so, I just decided that what mattered at that point was how our remaining time would be spent. By the end, she was non-verbal, and had been for quite a while, and given how her memory was, I decided the best way to spend that time wasn’t sharing with her what’s going on in my life- which she would forget relatively quickly- but watch the movies and TV shows she loved, something that I’ve written about before.

With my mom’s memorial service, I wanted to excise all of the stress and pain and difficult times that came with her disease, and the last part of her life, and focus on helping her reclaim the voice that she lost, the person that dementia took from me, and thanks to her, I had the tools to do just that.

What I’d like to share now is the eulogy that I wrote for, and read at her memorial service. It doesn’t really go in depth with who she was in life, which I did more in my obituary for her, but rather, the impact she had on my life, and the direction I’ve taken it.

“How to proceed with this has been on my mind for a while; that’s bound to happen when, between cancer and dementia, you realize a loved one’s life is ticking down. My mother was a challenging woman to pin down for a variety of reasons, but on the night after her passing, the right approach for my words in this moment hit me, and it meant looking at her through the prism of my life; in particular, the choices she set out for me after we moved to Georgia in 1988.

I was a very introverted kid when we moved to Georgia for my father’s work, or rather, I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to make friends after the only ones I knew were four states away in Ohio. A nearby Presbyterian church was part of the ways in which my mother attempted to build up our social circle, and one of the pastors at the church you’ve already heard from today. When I started in 5th grade, we found out about a Cub Scout pack out of the school that I joined up with, and they were going to form a new Scout Troop afterwards, out of the same Presbyterian church. Already, my social circle was building up…because of choices presented to me by my mom.

In middle school, I wanted to join band. It wasn’t necessarily due to any particular musical acumin that I displayed at the time. I chose the trombone, and for three years, I built that musical skill- such as it would become. Three years later, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue it in high school. Part of her rationale for trying to get me to continue in high school was that we had paid off the trombone, but she also said that the program I’d be going to- at Lassiter High School- had a reputation. She made a deal with me- I try it for one year, and if I didn’t like it, I could quit. As they say, the rest is history, and by the time I graduated from Lassiter, I had four more years of trombone under my belt, even more friends in my circle, and I was getting ready to be in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Band. I also had another opportunity presented to me by my mother.

As I was reaching the end of my time at Lassiter, I will admit that I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to study in college. By that point, soundtracks like “The Crow” and “Braveheart” had put the interest in composing music in me, but it was more pipe dream than something I felt was a serious possibility. At a local restaurant we visited weekly, one of the waitresses had mentioned to my parents that they had a relative studying music recording at Georgia State University. I had already applied to UGA, but this put GSU on my radar, and I applied. Around spring break of my senior year, I had quite a series of highs and lows, as I was rejected by UGA, but the next week- after a concert at an Atlanta symposium- I got my acceptance letter to GSU, and the next big adventure that my mother kickstarted me on began, which led to new friendships, and new opportunities and skills that I would continue using to this day.

After I graduated from GSU five years later, I found myself in a position not unlike many other graduates- unsure of what my future career would hold. I tried to find a place at local recording studios, but nothing really panned out. This continued into the fall, but we continued to watch movies together. One day, after a showing at Regal Town Center 16 in Kennesaw, she said I should apply for a job. I had already worked at one movie theatre, and honestly, I needed a job. A few weeks later, I was on the payroll, and the rest- as they say- is history. Without Regal, I wouldn’t have met so many of the friends I have today. Without Regal, I would not have been able to get into the projection booth, which would not have instilled a love of movie projection that would then give me the opportunity for the after-Regal career I’m in now. And finally, without Regal I wouldn’t have met Meredith, whom began as a dear friend and is now my wife of almost ten years. She has been invaluable to this final journey with my mom in the past few years.

Along the way of the journey I just recounted, there were plenty of choices of my own accord that have shaped the person I am today, but in the moments presented above, I hope you can see- as I can now- that my mom provided a lot of the foundation that I would build off of over the past nearly four decades. There were certainly moments where we did not get along, moments where I wasn’t sure I could get along with her moving forward, but when the chips were down, she was always looking out for me, and wanted to see me succeed.

My birth was not an easy one, and there were times when my situation almost broke my mother, but when I was ready to come home, she was ready to be a mother, and make sure I was loved and supported. She probably held on too tightly at times, certainly, but she was there for me. When her father was diagnosed with cancer in 2000, she went up to Ohio as much as she could to help him, and we were visiting him almost every day the last seven weeks of his life before he passed in July of that year. When I was hospitalized for lung issues in 2007, she took the time off of work to be at the hospital with me every day, even when I was in a medically-induced coma. And when my father began having his heart issues, it was shortly after that where her knee issues forced her into retiring from teaching. As his heart issues commenced, she was able to be there for him when he needed to be picked up from the hospital after he drove himself to the ER after a scare, and then, she was able to spend night and day with him at the hospital the last weekend of his life when he passed in 2013. Regardless of our issues, she was there for people she cared about, and wanted to help as many of them as possible. That was just who she was.

Beyond everything that I’ve said up until this moment, I think the things I cherish most from her are the memories, namely when it comes to movies, TV and music. Our eventually-idle talk of writing a movie book after I had begun to get published for blurb reviews in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution led to me honing my writing, building a website I maintain to this day, and even repurposing our jokey title for our book for my own personal memoir, which I’m sure I’ll publish one of these days. The way she would sing along to the music on drives, and the music she sang, from a variety of genres that not only showed her own musical range, but helped me deepen my own love of music. The way she would share favorite films and shows with me- sometimes at a way too young age- that would help me appreciate older films, and specific types of films, whether it was slapstick like “Arsenic and Old Lace” or “Young Frankenstein” to adventures like “Charade” or her favorite film, “North by Northwest.” The way she would laugh at certain jokes on TV every time, without fail, whether it was the way Harry Solomon taunted his sister Sally with a sock monkey on “3rd Rock from the Sun,” the apocalyptic turkey drop on “WKRP in Cincinnati” or the farcical nature of Frasier Crane and his family pretending to be Jewish when meeting one of his girlfriend’s mothers. And, the way we would have discussions about movies after watching them that helped inspire me to use my own voice in a more substantial way about films, TV and music. Those moments will stay with me.

I could go on, but I want to use these moments to share her own words. She wrote the following in 2006 and it is a simple, but lovely, representation of who she was:

If I could have a wish for,
I’d wish your sorrows small and few,
I’d wish your joys big and bright,
And love surround you day and night.

And now, some of her spoken voice, recorded in 2018- shortly before we received her dementia diagnosis- as part of a discussion I’d long wanted to have with her about what she loved about movies. I hope you enjoy these excerpts.”

I released that episode with my discussion with her in 2023, and you can hear it below, and read about it here.

In addition to sharing excerpts of the episode, I also recorded memories from friends and family about mom who could not be at the service, but who wanted to share something. At the end of the service, I played an original song she sang based on the old adage, “It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” You can listen to the song, “It’s Over,” below.