Sundance: ‘Life According to Sam’ invites healthy introspection (+video)

It would be inaccurate to say that “Life According to Sam” is a documentary about a de facto terminal illness, or a film about a vivacious boy. Because in reality, the movie is about both those things — with the common thread linking together the two themes being Leslie Gordon, the tenacious mother committed to solving the puzzle of progeria in order to prolong the life of her brave son.

The Fines clearly have a knack for storytelling, given how seamlessly they switch the film’s focus back and forth between progeria and Sam Bern. The end result is a work of art that will inspire people to inwardly reflect about how they too might infuse more gratitude and meaning into their lives.

“We’ve found that (our other films) get to be successful when people leave the movie theater or screening and they talk about it,” Sean Fine told the Deseret News. “They talk about (the movie) at dinner, they talk about it for a couple days later and it makes them think about bigger things than what they just watched on the screen.

“And we’re getting that kind of reaction from people with ‘Life According to Sam.’ The kind of thing that’s really neat is you have this kid — who most of us if we saw him on the street would just stare at when he walked by and kind of wonder, ‘What’s wrong with that kid?’ — and here he is causing people to think differently about their lives. That’s the power of filmmaking, and I think that’s the power of documentaries.”

Although Sundance films are not rated, "Life According to Sam" would likely receive a PG rating.

Jamshid Ghazi Askar is a graduate of BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School and member of the Utah State Bar. Contact him at jaskar@desnews.com or 801-236-6051.