I Am Sam
**
Cinema Releases - May 10, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA.
132 minutes. Directed by Jessie Nelson. Written by Kristine Johnson, Jessie
Nelson. Starring Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Dianne Wiest,
Loretta Devine, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern, Brad Allan
Silverman.
There is a scene in "I Am Sam" in
which Sam goes shoe shopping for his daughter. We get to meet his gang of
buddies, which includes a Down's Syndrome sufferer who slowly but surely
speaks pearls of wisdom, a Rainman-esque young guy who recites movie trivia,
and a middle-aged gentleman who is constantly paranoid. They parade in front
of the camera with inappropriate shoe choices, and then there is a shot of
them walking away from the shop carrying balloons.
Much of the movie is like that -- cutesy idiosyncrasy
or sentimentality, shown to us through choppy cutting and frenetically zooming
camera, punctuated by an endless stream of music cues. This is not a movie
that earns tears; it takes a plunger and sucks them from our
eyelids.
Sam, played by Sean Penn, is a man in his late
thirties who works as a flunky at Starbucks and has the mental ability of
a seven year-old. He is raising his daughter (who is, funnily enough, seven
years old) pretty much alone, although he gets bits of help from those cuddly
companions and from the lady across the hall.
The daughter is Lucy (Dakota Fanning) -- she was
named after "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and "I Am Sam" takes a lot of
inspiration from Beatles songs. There are more Beatles covers here than you'd
want to hear in the space of a lifetime, let alone 132 minutes, and Sam uses
snippets of Beatles history as parables for life, and the message of the
film, said explicitly by one of the characters, is "all you need is
love".
The story follows Sam's efforts to keep custody
of Lucy despite the battles of social workers to get the kid put into foster
care. It is alleged that a man with the mental capacity of a child is likely
to be in over his head when it comes to raising children, plus it can't be
helpful for the child's emotional or intellectual growth. The allegation
has a point, but Sam and Lucy don't buy it, and they manage to enlist a
high-priced lawyer played by Michelle Pfeiffer to argue their
case.
Let's think about this. Pfeiffer is on board to
show her colleagues that she's not heartless; she's fighting the case for
her ego and goes about it by reciting clichés. She actually speaks
the line, "It's clear that one's intellectual capacity has no bearing on
the ability to love!" The prosecutor, however, wants Lucy to be raised by
someone of awareness -- he cares about his arguments because, "I go through
these cases time and time again, and you know who always comes back? The
children."
A movie is in trouble when it wants us to root
for the wrong side. Sam is likeable. Of course he is. He is a man of purely
magnanimous intentions. But come on -- for all intents and purposes he is
seven years old, and would you trust a seven year-old to be a parent? Aren't
there enough adults doing lousy jobs already? What lesson is this movie trying
to teach us? What problem does it have with guardianship of Lucy going to
a foster parent for practical purposes and Sam taking care of emotional input?
"I Am Sam" is one of those movies that make liberals look stupid -- it plays
into the hands of those who think we have hearts in the right places and
heads up our backsides.
If there's one thing that works in "I Am Sam",
it is Penn's performance. Yes, Penn is an actor of great emotional complexity
in a role of limited range, but his work here is more than an impersonation,
and he creates an endearing and believable character without compromising
on extreme mannerisms. The relationship between Penn and Fanning is shallow
and manipulative, but it's touching. Pfeiffer, however, acts in a mannered
and awful way -- she yammers into her cellphone, nervously taps, and does
that whole Modern Businesswoman thing less subtly than actresses in commercials.
I kept thinking back to her subtle, slinky performance in "The Fabulous Baker
Boys" and feeling mournful.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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