Uma Lição de Amor

Sean Penn plays Sam, a mentally retarded man who has become a father to a bright beautiful baby girl. He has also become single on the same day because the girls mother ran off and left them. Sam does his best to raise her along with the assistance of his friends and everything is fine until the girl, Lucy, turns seven. Now she is equal if not greater on the intelligence scale and Social Services has taken her from her father for Lucy's own good. Same enlists the aid of Rita, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, a guilt-stricken mega-attorney who takes his case pro bono. Eventually Sam finds himself in a battle against Laura Dern who is playing a foster mother attempting to adopt Lucy for good. My wife had tears running down her face throughout this movie. Other women in the audience were sobbing during the movie. I didn't get it. I'm not saying the movie wasn't well done. It was. I'm not saying the actors didn't do a great job. They did but (and here is where I get in trouble at times) Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer are both very well respected in their field and we tend to expect good performances from them. I will say the little girl bordered on phenomenal with her control.

All I can say is something wasn't hitting me on this one, and while I will admit that I didn't hate it and have seen many that were far worse, it just didn't move me one way or the other.

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.

I have to confess off the top that I am not and never have been a particular fan of Sean Penn. I have no specific criticism to make of him; as an actor he simply doesn't appeal to me. Because of that bias I approached this movie with low expectations. The story of a mentally handicapped man fighting for custody of his seven year old daughter sounded intriguing, but it starred Penn. But what a pleasant surprise this movie turned out to be!

Penn is actually very good in this role. He brings a realism to the character of Sam Dawson, and portrays him sensitively and with real emotion. In fact, I thought the only performance that was better than Penn's came not from Michelle Pfeiffer (who disappointed me a bit, actually) but rather from little Dakota Fanning as Sam's daughter Lucy. She seemed so natural in this role, and I would hope that we see more of her in the years to come. Pfeiffer, on the other hand, (as Sam's lawyer Rita Harrison) just didn't carry the role off that well, and even the courtroom scenes to me lacked the tension one would have expected from such an emotionally-laden issue.

The movie weakens in the last little bit, going for the sappy (and highly unrealistic) ending - unrealistic particularly in the way Lucy's foster mother (Laura Dern) ends up handling the situation.

Having said that, I still enjoyed this movie very much. It's raised my assessment of Sean Penn's acting abilities and I would recommend it to others and would watch it again.

7/10

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!

In an eye opening performance, Sean Penn plays mentally challenged Sam. It was the 2001 Academy Awards when I began to doubt the Oscars because Sean Penn was robbed of the Best Actor category. I really believed at the time, that Sean Penn was mentally challenged. He was way more deserving of the award than Denzel.

This is one film that can tug your heart strings and have your eyes flooded with tears. It's powered by the performances of Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer and Dakota Fanning. Dakota has an innate ability to use her big beautiful eyes to induce crying. Michelle can steal a moment from Sean in any scene with her beautifully delivered words.

The story of fighting for custody of his daughter is one for all ages and it's a tragic story to be told but can captivate any audience and especially all mothers and fathers out there. When you finish watching, you'll have red eyes from wiping away those tears. You'll also be in a mood to start watching more movies containing Sean Penn.

If you've never seen a Sean Penn film before this, you'll believe that he is truly handicapped. Sean Penn's commitment to this role is accounted for six months of research on mentally challenged people. I'm not knocking Denzel Washington as an actor, as he's supremely talented. But Sean Penn has an uncanny ability to make you believe he is not playing a character of Sam, but is the character of Sam.

The character of Sam, is not inspiring because he is handicapped. It's due to how loving he is and how much fighting he does to get his daughter back and make her happy that makes Sam inspiring. Kids can watch this movie, and parents will enjoy it most of all. It's not a movie that should be missed by anyone. There's no reason to dislike, I Am Sam.