Even on digital, Sam’s story is something else

There are very good reasons why it’s not a good idea to preview a movie on video. I emerged from the 5 p.m. showing of the documentary “The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam,” which was screening as part of the 2004 Spokane International Film festival, and I found that I liked it much better in the theater than on the small screen. And my living-room screen is small in name only, being a Hitachi 60-inch set.

The story that writer-director Anne-Marie Fleming tells is fascinating, the way she sought out the real story of her great-grandfather, the China-born magician known as Long Tack Sam . Fleming’s use of animation is fascinating, especially in the way she tells the ever-changing story of her great-grandfather’s early years. And her means of morphing photographs not only is funny but it makes good use of the many static photographs that she uses Ken Burns -like to augment the period film footage and contemporary interviews.

Still, these sequences are so good, and the period footage that she managed to scare up is so appropriate to her story, that they make any false step that much more noticeable. And even though it looks better blown up, her use of digital photography still looks washed out, and this includes both the trip she took to China and the many interviews that she does with friends of her great-grandparents or surviving members of her family. The simple fact is the images produced by digital cameras just don’t look as good as those we’re accustomed to watching on 35mm film.

Yet as “The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam” played out earlier tonight on the screen of The Met , washed-out digital images didn’t make any difference. Fleming’s message of how easy it is to lose our history, both of culture overall and family in specific, is moving and poignant. In the end, it proves once again that style plus sensitivity is always a match for flawed technology.