I Am Sam

There's only one reason why I don't like this movie right now. Because I have a splitting headache from being emotionally drained!

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has been the top of my list for all time favorite movies, now I AM SAM has moved in right next to it.

I'm not saying that you have to have kids to understand the true meaning behind this movie, but I must say it certainly helps. I told my wife on the way back home from the movie that she was sooo stuck with me. She knew what I was referring to; our 6 month old little girl and our 5 year old little girl. I guess I'm just a good ole fashion softy. I came home and gave my 5 year old the biggest hug of her life and the tears just started flowing. I felt I had been impatient with her lately and just needed to let her know how much her daddy loves her.

I know this isn't a true rating of a movie. I'm not describing certain scenes that I thought were great or needed improving, I just wanted to express how it made me feel. And though I have a pounding head right now, I feel like I'm the luckiest dad in the world!

This movie has flaws, but this movie touched me. Maybe its because I'm a father of a six year-old girl, but I was moved by the love between father and daughter, Sam and Lucy. Sean Penn plays Sam, a mentally challenged man that instantly becomes a single parent, when the mother immediately abandons them when they leave the hospital. He some how raises her with help from a neighbor, played by Diane Wiest. On her eighth birthday, child protective services take her away from Sam. It has become apparent that Lucy surpassed her father in intelligence, and she is struggling to cope with classmates and friends making fun of Sam. Can Sam adequately care for Lucy? The whole time I was watching, the answer was, no. This is where the movie fails. It did not convince me that this mentally challenged man that could not even eat at a Kip's Big Boy without freaking out because they did not have French pancakes, could raise this child by himself.

I am sure that Sean Penn's will get some accolades for his performance. However, I felt that I had seen it before, and I had seen it done better. He was adequate in the role, but Leonardo DiCaprio did it better in `What's Eating Gilbert Grape', and I even think that Mickey Rooney did it better in `Bill'. Penn's downfall could have been the character's lack of dept. Maybe if we had seen his childhood, his relationship with his mother, or the relationship with Lucy's mother, it would have created a more believable role. He does do well to show his love for Lucy. The chemistry between Lucy and Sam is touching. You had better take some tissue.

The newcomer, Dakota Fanning, as Lucy, was wonderful. Lucy is cute and loveable. She is the only thing right in Sam's life. She is hope. She is beautiful. She is everything to Sam. When she is taken away, your heart will break.

Michelle Pfeiffer, as Rita the lawyer, was a pleasant surprise. Rita is so vain that she takes Sam's case just to save face in front of her colleagues. She is too busy, even for her own family. All she cares about is winning. She is heartless. However, she blossoms during the movie. Sam opens her eyes. She is like the butterfly that Lucy does a report on in school. She is the true hero of the movie.

The music in the movie was great. If you are a fan of the Beatles, which most everyone is (even if you may not realize it), you will appreciate this movie. The Beatles' songs convey a feeling of safety and comfort. The songs are familiar and soothing. In Sam's chaotic world, the Beatles come through with a calming effect. One of my all time favorite songs, Across the Universe, is used as well.

Overall, I think this movie comes through with heartfelt messages. However, you will have to suspend belief and let yourself go with it. Laura Dern also pops up with an excellent performance. The final scenes were fresh and unexpected. Thank God this movie did not stay in the courtroom!

7/10

In 'Rain Man', Dustin Hoffman gave the best portrayal I have ever seen of a mentally disturbed person, but Sean Penn came very close here. He was quite convincing but somewhat funnier. With Hoffman, I never quite knew when he was supposed to be funny, but with Penn there were many funny moments that I felt okay about laughing at. And I just had to like the character.

I've heard so many good things about Dakota Fanning, and now I see for myself. She's great.

The actors playing Sam's friends also seemed very convincing, one in particular. I didn't catch his name, but he wore glasses and I think he must have really been mentally disabled. The others could have been but might just have been acting.

MIchelle Pfeiffer was very good also, and gorgeous. And Richard Schiff was likable as the lawyer on the other side of Sam's case. In fact, I didn't see those who were against Sam as evil. They just had Lucy's best interests in mind. But I wanted Sam to win.

While it is true this may have been done before, I think this movie offered unique twists and qualities other movies didn't have, and the performances were very good.

I know that title isn't very descriptive, but all I could say for awhile after watching I Am Sam was, "Wow!" Although that's a positive endorsement of the film--it's rare that a film has me basically speechless afterward (I usually suffer from logorrhea, which sounds close enough to diarrhea that you could call it (verbal) flatulence instead if you like)--it turned out to be quite a problem, because we went to dinner right afterward and I had to give a lecture. I believe I was served some kind of raw beef, and I have an exorbitant dry cleaning bill from the tomatoes and rotten eggs.

But I won't bill director/co-writer Jessie Nelson, because it's not her fault that her film is so powerful and so stunningly constructed that it made me monosyllabic. I can only blame myself for putting off watching her work for so long.

I Am Sam begins with Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) at his job. He lives in Santa Monica and works at Starbucks. We can see that he's mentally retarded. He appears slightly autistic. Because of this, he's given only menial tasks to do. Suddenly, his boss tells him that he has to go. We see Sam running through the streets, catching buses and so on to end up at a hospital. A woman is in labor and it turns out that he's the father, but she wants nothing to do with him afterward--apparently, it was something like a one night stand. She abandons him with the baby. Aided by a quartet of developmentally disabled friends and his agoraphobic neighbor, Annie Cassell (Dianne Wiest), we see Sam doing his best to raise the girl, Lucy Diamond Dawson (eventually played by Dakota Fanning)--so named because Sam is a big Beatles fan. At least until he is "accidentally arrested". Government officials question his ability to raise his daughter, and I Am Sam becomes the tale of Sam's legal battle to retain custody of Lucy, aided by high profile lawyer Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer).

I Am Sam will likely make you say, "Wow!" afterward because it is a masterpiece on every artistic and technical level.

All of the major cast members give one of the best performances of their careers, and many of these actors have had a number of artistic triumphs on their résumés. Sean Penn is completely natural and believable as a developmentally disabled man. Two of the men playing his friends really were developmentally disabled, having been found at L.A. Goal, a non-profit agency dedicated to helping such people through a variety of programs, and it's next to impossible to tell them apart from the other actors. Nelson and her co-writer, Kristine Johnson, spent a lot of time at L.A. Goal doing research, as did Penn. Pfeiffer perfectly executes a complex character who has to undergo a number of far reaching transformations and even a breakdown of sorts. As for Fanning, I haven't seen her in a film yet where she didn't threaten to steal the whole thing from her senior, much more experienced colleagues, and during the filming of I Am Sam she was only 6 or 7. Wiest, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern and others also turn in very complex performances that convey characters with deep, multifaceted histories, despite their relatively little screen time.

Nelson approaches the film with a number of unusual artistic and technical angles that all work wonderfully. The cinematography is mostly hand-held work. Unlike similar attempts in films such as Lars Von Trier's Dogville (2003), the hand-held work never feels affected or intrusive here--it's completely "organic". The most common purpose of the unusual cinematography is to give the viewer almost a subjective sense of what it's like to be Sam, to experience the world in the way he does. Cinematographer Elliot Davis moves his camera in a way closely mirrored with Sean Penn's movements. There's an additional emotional symbolism. When Sam is feeling agitated, the camera-work is agitated. Likewise when Sam is confused, pensive, and so on. Davis shoots from a lot of unusual angles. All of them work.

Nelson also has the editing, lighting and production design match the aesthetic of the cinematography. The editing is sometimes very choppy, but always feels "natural", just right for conveying Sam's experience. Sometimes there are odd incongruencies between sound and image, or between temporal sequences. The lighting, camera angles and production design often make some elements appropriately fantastical. The production design and costuming match not only Sam's world, but other characters' worlds, as well. Not one aspect of the film seems to have gone by without close examination and artistic justification.

The music, which largely consists of Beatles tunes performed by other artists, fits the film perfectly. Sam and his friends are all a bit obsessed with the Beatles (and apparently, so were many L.A. Goal members when Nelson visited). The Beatles tunes exquisitely match the various moods of the film, and the lyrics often complement emotions and actions.

But even above all of that, I Am Sam tells a heart-wrenching story that's something of an exciting, emotional roller-coaster. There are many humorous scenes, often centered on Sam and his buddies going about the world with a kind of Winnie the Pooh-like wisdom that seems more honest and admirable than most of the film's "normal" folks. Of course, there are also many scenes that will require tissues for tears. And there's just about every emotion in between the two.

Finally, the film has a great message. Does parenting, or general personal worth, really hinge on intellectual ability and amassed knowledge? I don't think so. Parents who are very smart can have more than their share of flaws, as we see with Pfeiffer's character early on. Plenty of us had parents who were smart enough but couldn't help us with our geometry homework. Love may not be all you need, but it's definitely one of the major prerequisites.

It is with a great feeling of disappointment that I write this negative commentary on the movie, I am Sam.

The movie starts off reminiscent of Rain Man. The obsessive-compulsive traits of autism are apparent as Sean Penn's character; Sam guides his fingers through the packets of Equal and Sugar Twin separating them into their own groups.

We then learn that Sam works at Starbucks and before we have a chance to get to know him we're off to a hospital where a woman who we are never introduced to is giving birth to the other lead character, Sam's daughter, Lucy. We are never given any more information about this woman.

Somehow Sam manages to raise this child some help from his neighbour who I assume is agoraphobic, but we never really know for sure. Anyway, after a series of circumstantial events, Lucy is taken from Sam by the social workers and Sam is forced to look for a lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer) who will argue his case to keep Lucy in his care.

Sean Penn's portrayal a mentally disabled person is very good, but what sort of mental illness does he have? Is he autistic? How severe is it? One minute, Sam is answering questions by relating their answers to obscure Beatles lyrics and the next, he is losing his patience and causing a scene in a restaurant that doesn't have his pancakes on the menu. I am no expert on mental illness, but would someone that has Sam's condition be able to make connections his life and the Beatles song, "Michelle"?

I also had a problem with the fact that just because Sam is sweet and good and able to live independently that we should by default assume that he is the best person to raise Lucy. The social workers and layers are portrayed as terrible people with no other goal than to tear a happy family apart.

I believe this movie was intended to display mentally disabled people in a different light, and to show that there are many things that mentally disabled people can do, but it failed. Because the antagonists and so many elements of the movie were so unrealistic, it doesn't convince the audience that, in the real world, a person like Sam could actually raise a child.