We first meet Sam, a lively thirteen-year-old boy in his final year of junior high, prepping to begin high school. The camera tucks itself into his home and we watch a routine morning of brushing teeth, getting dressed and breakfast. Quickly we learn, in Life According to Sam, a documentary film directed by Sean Fine, that Sam Berns is diagnosed with progeria, a disease that accelerates the aging process of the body. It is a fatal disease that claims the lives of its victims most always before the age of twenty. Nevertheless, Life According to Sam offers the story of a boy who refuses to let his disease hinder his enjoyment of life, even as his physician mother strives to devise a new lifesaving drug. Sam inspires viewers with the confidence instilled in him by his parents. Although this rare disease is ever-present in /Life According to Sam/, the film is much more about adolescence, a theme that often finds center stage in Fine’s three most recent films.
The director graduated from Connecticut College in 1996 and last April he and his wife took the Oscar for Best Documentary Short for their film Inocente. Since that night in Los Angeles, Fine and his company Fine Films have been very busy. He recently took time to talk about his work and how his experiences at Conn influenced and shaped his career. His enthusiasm in talking about his craft is perhaps why Fine’s subjects let his camera into their most private moments. Fine described his undergraduate experience as one that allowed him to explore unexpected paths. He designed his own major around the sciences, especially zoology. “In science,” Fine said, “you problem-solve and come up with solutions. [My professors] opened my mind up to the idea that science is creative like art. Scientists are great artists.” He even used his calculus class to plot mechanical methods for focusing on a moving subject.
After graduation, Fine went to work for National Geographic as a filmmaker and cinematographer on the groundbreaking series Front Line Diaries. In his years with National Geographic, Fine traveled the world to interview the likes of Nelson Mandela and President Musharraf, the former President of Pakistan. He filmed exotic animals, honor killings and commanders of the Fark movement in Colombia. He also met his wife, Andrea, who became his filmmaking partner. Although Fine enjoyed the many incredible adventures that came out of this job, he longed for something more: “What happens is when you’re working for a big company you have a lot of people to answer to…I felt like it was starting to become a little formulaic for me, and so I needed to try something different. I felt really free when I got to actually take the leap and make a film for theatrical release.”
The first independent film he and his wife made was War/Dance, a mesmerizing tale of the trip to a national dance contest by a group of young Northern Uganda refugees whose lives were ravaged by the grotesque nature of their country’s civil war. The Fines track thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds Nancy, Dominic and Rose as they travel from their refugee camp to the capital of Uganda, Kampala. In an interview, Rose recounts how rebels came into her house in the middle of the night and took her parents, leaving her and her siblings orphans. Dominic describes being forced to serve as a child soldier; although it is years since he escaped, he still refuses to disclose the details of the acts he was forced to commit.
One heart-wrenching scene shows us Nancy visiting her father’s grave—he was killed in the war just a few years ago—and breaking down at his burial site. This scene, perhaps the most raw and intense scene in the film, is characterized by Fine as “totally unexpected. I couldn’t believe that happened and it was actually a moment where I thought I was in the way. I kept putting the camera down, thinking, gosh, I should not be here: this is a personal moment. But I kept thinking this is the only moment that people are going to understand what this war is doing to people. It’s the only moment that’s happening right in front of your eyes, so I kept filming and at the end, her mom thanked me for being there and that it helped her to have the camera there.”
The teenagers’ only solace is dance. Through its movement and rhythm they can tell stories of community, family and ancestry. But the dances also allow these children to express the pain and suffering they have endured. That is not to say that they cannot articulate their pain with words. In tightly framed interviews, Fine draws out their feelings and brings the audience into their experience by filming the children as they look directly into the lens. “You’re forced to look at someone who you think you know,” Fine said. “You’ve read in the news about child soldiers and people in Africa that are suffering. Then these kids get up on screen and they open their mouth and they say something that blows you away and it’s completely different than you would ever think would come out of their mouth. That forces you to listen. Your mind takes over.” That powerful reaction no doubt helped War/Dance receive a nomination for an Academy Award in 2006.
Inocente extended the Fines’ empathic approach to their subjects, this time tackling homelessness. Inocente follows a young Spanish girl, Inocente, whose family has struggled to find a home. As she struggles to maintain a life of relative normalcy on the street, she also grows in her passion for painting— a talent that Fine highlights in all of its quirky glory. Luckily, Inocente has people around her who are committed to exhibiting and showcasing her art.
Fine’s kinetic cinematography captivates us; from close-ups of Inocente’s canvas to the way the camera peeks in on her daily routine, we lose ourselves in Inocente’s story, in the swirls of paint that fill her life. Fine selects the tiniest moments that reveal her creativity and the deep pain of homelessness. Analyzing what might be the essence of his filmmaking technique, he said, “When you look at something with your normal eyes it just happens so quickly, but when you have a camera you have the ability to see the details, the things you might miss and the things that are emotional. Whether it’s somebody holding somebody’s hand, a sigh or a tear falling down, you can look and appreciate it for what it is.”
And although Inocente’s story is steeped in pain, her voice and artwork show resilience in the face of despair. The film conveys her emotions pointedly, catching the look in her eyes when she speaks of her hardships. Beautifully photographed, sharply edited and graced with a moving score, the film never lags. Inocente’s insight into not only herself but also into her family and environment dramatize this story of a young woman’s expression through art.
A scene in Life According To Sam shows Sam awaiting the results from the drug trial his mother has worked tirelessly to produce; her hopes of curing Sam are dependent on what they learn. Almost always upbeat and relaxed, Sam now appears anxious: his mother’s efforts and hopes as well as his own future hang in the balance. The film cuts from a shot of Sam’s family listening to the doctor to a tight shot of Sam’s hands fidgeting nervously. The camera hangs on the moment for a few seconds to allow us to share in the complexity of how Sam deals with his disease. To bring us these nuanced moments, Fine explained, “You have to be ready, you have to be looking, you have to blend in and listen. You become part of the scene and you capture those moments.”
