History can only be buried for so long before the truth comes out. This relates to large revelations (the purposeful attempts to control and reduce Indigenous populations through residential schools in the U.S. and Canada) and interpersonal discoveries that wield enormous perspective-shifting power. Both are interwoven throughout Tadashi Nakamura’s Third Act, his latest documentary which starts as an exploration of his filmmaker father’s, Robert, own life and career before expanding outward to connect traumas known to pain previously unknown. Screening during Sundance Film Festival 2025, Third Act is a quiet rumination on perseverance against some of the loudest voices which, once believed purged from our community, have been given license to rise again, making the remembrance and confrontation of the past all the more important to protect the future.
Robert A. Nakamura is many things: photographer, filmmaker, teacher, activist, father, and son. He’s the founder of non-profit Visual Communications, an organization devoted to uplifting Asian-American and Pacific Islander creatives; founder of the UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications; and the creator of the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center at the Japanese American National Museum. His professional work sought to shift the way Americans perceive Asian-Americans via supporting artistic expressions that bring the Asian-American communities’ perspectives to the forefront. Much of his work, consciously or not, is directly tied to the governmental and public response to the Japanese acts of aggression during World War II and the internment camp in Manzanar, California, that he and his family were sent to when he was a young boy. What begins as a simple record of a filmmaker’s life in his retirement phase of existence (third act of life), slowly turns into a pronounced exploration of the scars that continue to ache and the continued reverberations across generations.
L-R: Tadashi Nakamura, Robert A. Nakamura, and Prince in the documentary THIRD ACT. Photo courtesy of Generation Films/Sundance Film Festival.
There’s a big difference between being aware of something and knowing something. One can be aware of an event, historical or personal, and not know its details or its echoing implications. For Tadashi, called “Tad” by his family, this comes into play very quickly within the documentary as conversations with Robert, called “Bob” by his family, about his photography, filmmaking, and activism turn toward conversations about Bob’s father, Tad’s grandfather, Harukichi, who immigrated to the U.S. before Bob’s birth. Using a mix of talking head interviews, live-capturing of footage, still photography, and video materials, Bob discusses his work. At first, it’s as a subject to a biographer, but while exploring the surface of his legacy through their conversations about this work and by looking over his various projects, activist work, and life history, Bob’s duty as a father overtakes his professional personal, giving way to an exploration of trauma that has been unintentionally passed down. Where the known and unknown meet is within the space of learning how Bob’s time at Manzanar shaped his view of himself as an Asian-American, how it caused him to create negative perceptions of his father (whom he loved), and how he still carries the shame of the experience both inside the camp and among the public’s reaction to reintegration post-World War II. With this new information, the documentary begins opening up to explore Tad as the son of Bob, his perception of self in the wake of Bob’s guidance, Harukichi as patriarch through which Bob’s experience was possible and shaped, and Tad’s transition to parenthood through his eldest child, nicknamed “Prince.” As truths become shared, it becomes clear that the only way to truly understand Bob is through the holistic exploration of the Nakamura family, past, present, and future.
Currently, nationwide, the newly-inaugurated administration has pushed policies that disrupt the regular flow of existence through acts ranging from the freezing of funds related to social services (ex: Medicare, Meals on Wheels, WIC), the closing of the southern border to unlawful and legal immigration, and even decreasing immigrant rights in an effort to remove possible unlawful immigrants through the use of quotas. A lot of these policies bear the echoes of policies past which saw the legal-though-unethical creation of U.S. internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II, enhanced racial tensions between Japanese-Americans and non-Japanese-Americans, and setting back entire generations due to lost wealth through businesses and property, among other things. For someone like Prince, what his grandfather went through must seem like an abstract idea. It is even for Tad, who’s significantly older and is, due to his own work and age, far more connected to the Japanese-American community, its ties to the Los Angeles area, and can speak to the immigrant experience as someone who felt like an outsider in his community. Yet, even for Tad, who had been to Manzanar as a filmmaker, with the realization of how that experience not only continues to linger within Bob or how that experience dramatically altered the course of the Nakamura family, there’s a sense of surprise regarding the perpetual pain Bob’s hidden until now. A pain that, through Third Act, we come to understand as a driving factor in all of his work, the work that’s helped define him as “The Godfather of Asian-American Cinema.” What is completely uplifting is revealed to be born from soured seeds, something which does not tarnish the work in the slightest, so much as give it a different perspective through which it can be viewed. The things that Bob experienced may be lost to Prince and a matter of abstract history to Tad, especially at first, but, through the journey of making this documentary, Tad and Bob are able to bridge the divide between past and present in such a way that not only are we reminded that mental health should be taken seriously, but that the government is always willing to subjugate any citizen it can find the legal means and measures to. In essence, the pain that Bob experienced as a child followed him through adulthood and, perhaps only now, through this project with Tad, could that experience be properly unpacked; additionally, the events they discuss aren’t just abstract moments, but heartbreaking truths of governmental betrayal. Betrayals that the current admin are setting up to replicate, but far more harshly.
If you want to learn about the significant moments in Robert A. Nakamura’s life, you can go the official film website for a timeline, go to one of several sites extoling his works, or his Wikipedia page. You’ll get a sense of what he’s done, but very little of who he is. To some degree, Tadashi may have intended to do something like that, chatting with his father about his process, his tools, and his ideas, in order to glean some sense of the figure with a large shadow while also locking it down on celluloid (or digital in this case), but what Third Act unlocks is not only far more personal and expansive for the Nakamura family in terms of what their respective legacy is, it also speaks to a country-wide trauma that’s never been truly healed. A country cannot just turn its back on its citizens and expect anyone within its borders to remain with some wound — physical, emotional, metaphysical, or spiritual. Thankfully, the beautiful way that Tadashi interweaves the past and the present, a vision of a better future takes shape. With luck and a great deal of resistance, perhaps it will be able to solidify.
Screening during Sundance Film Festival 2025.
For more information, head either to the official Third Act Sundance webpage or film website.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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