Sam Klemke’s Time Machine
By Neivin Mathew
In an age where the inane stories of teenagers pollute the internet, it is a surprise to find out that someone had been doing the same thing 40-years-ago. Sam Klemke’s Time Machine is a charming look at the mundane existence of a Colorado man as he documents his life over 37 years.
Since 1977, Sam Klemke had been keeping video archives of his life, recapping major events of each year for the sake of posterity. In one of his earliest videos, he muses that “film can capture time, time that we will never see again.” At the same time that Klemke began his video diaries, the Voyager Interstellar mission was launched. Sam Klemke’s Time Machine comes from the mind of Australian director Matthew Bate, and contrasts Klemke’s homemade videos with the grander tale of how humanity wishes to be remembered, through the contents of the golden record aboard the Voyager spacecraft.
The movie begins with a 19-year-old Klemke enlightening his nonexistent audience to the purpose of his endeavor. His video diaries exhibit stereotypical human emotions. From searching for his purpose of life in his 20s, realizing his life is not what it was meant to be in his 30s, to having a midlife crisis in his 40s, Klemke’s diaries highlight the nuances of the human experience. His self-deprecating humour and tendency to make grand claims to reinvent himself every year give a disturbingly accurate representation of modern life.
Throughout the movie, the audience is given glimpses into the journey of the Voyager spacecraft. Klemke’s narration is juxtaposed with the Golden Record, and its purpose as a time capsule for the human race. Coupled with faux-French narration sequences of the Voyager’s travels, the movie contrasts the raw, uncensored depiction of Klemke’s life with the curated, and sanitized portrayal of humanity that is written on the Golden Record. The movie attempts to show Klemke as an individual, who, despite all his failings, represents the human race better than the actual representation of our species that was broadcasted into the universe.
The film is filled with deliberately jagged storytelling. It jumps from Klemke’s tapes to the Voyager’s story in a relatively discordant fashion. The archival footage of the Voyager, and the CGI renditions of its travels give the audience a sense of insignificance, making them realize that in the vast universe, they are nothing more than seven billion copies of Sam Klemke.
Sam Klemke’s Time Machine is a unique film that explores the basic human need to tell stories. It tells us something about ourselves that we might not realize, that we want the world to see us not as we are, but rather as an idealistic version of ourselves. Bate and Klemke have created a captivating film, that is sometimes depressing, but always entertaining. It is an uncensored preview of one man’s life that serves as a truthful commentary on the human condition.