Top Box Office Movies

I Am Sam (2001) New Line Cinema
2 hrs. 12 mins.
Starring: Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer and Dakota Fanning.
Directed by: Jessie Nelson

I Am Sam

Rating:

E-MAIL GIANCARLO DE LISI

Photo: New Line Cinema

Performance driven films are a treat to watch usually because the performances emit the film’s aesthetic. In ‘I Am Sam’; the performances dictate the emotions and actions of the central characters. Sean Penn powerfully portrays Sam Dawson, an adult with the intellectual capacity of a 7 year old. Due to a romantic encounter with a homeless woman who soon leaves him after the delivery, he is held accountable for his daughter Lucy Diamond Dawson. Newcomer Dakota Fanning vehemently displays her innate ability to convey her audacious emotions to the audience as she plays Sam’s intelligent daughter 6 year old daughter.

As she grows older, Sam’s mental capacity borders his ability to care for his daughter who soon will surpass him in the intellectual department. Child Services wants to take Luc away from Sam due to his apparent unfitting parenting skills. Enter Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer) as a seemingly immoral and high priced attorney who is coerced into the case on her own longing for the simple reason of ‘saving face’. Now the past two paragraphs make this film seem quite convenient in terms of characters and setting, yet the film does have its’ flaws and it also alludes to being something it is not.

The film’s main avenue is utterly what the trailer tells us. Sam aims at retaining custody of his only daughter while high priced court appointed attorneys do everything in their power to demonstrate he is not fit for her care. The film is a tender and touching drama that avoids the conventional courtroom scenes and finds its’ heart in the characters and not the tension. The triadic relationship between Sam, Lucy and Rita branches off into many orientations as we are exposed to the growing relationship between Sam and Lucy in the first 20 minutes of the film, then all three characters form the basis for the middle and in the last part of the film, the audience is exposed to an ever-growing and mutual understanding between Sam and Rita. This otherwise didactic relationship stems into a reciprocal relationship in which values, feelings and emotion are shared, nurtured and developed.

Pfeiffer plays her attorney character with minimal effort as we are treated to her character’s juiciest offerings towards the end of the film. The three dimensional characters serve the film well in terms of depth because we are engulfed in this sea of emotion in which Director Jessie Nelson (Corrina, Corrina) attempts at creating. In the last sequence of the film we view the attorney benefiting more from the case than the client which can be viewed as cliché; and it is, but within the contextual framework it passes as feasible. This withstanding, no matter how touching the emotions are, this is still a heavily flawed film. As the film was unraveling itself, I sincerely doubt this is the vision that Nelson had envisioned in her mind. The film’s aesthetic is impressive and the performances reflect the Director’s helming, but it seems to lack one aspect: vision. On a positive note, as aforementioned, the film does not rely on emotional courtroom sequences to win over the emotion, yet the emotion is sporadically detrimental due to overdrawn scenes and tepid pacing.

It seems as Nelson was fixated on bringing the performances to the surface and matching the costumes to fit the characters that she seemed to have lost sight of the aim of the film. This aim was to make us understand what it feels like to lose a child. The emotion is reserved for the formulaic last act, yet in order to get there; Sean Penn drives this film to a level it would not be at without him. In addition, perhaps Nelson was attempting to lens the film in a dizzying manner but she seems to be taking a page from Woody Allen’s style of shooting. She adapts the usage of quick cuts and rough editing, not to mention a quasi-documentary feel with jilted zooms and quick pans that at times make the film out to be something it is not. While Sean Penn’s performance rivals that of Dustin Hoffman’s in ‘Rain Man’, this is a heavily flawed film which possesses some fantastic attributes mostly in the performance area. The performances make this film stand out as an above average film for that reason alone. Mary Steenburgen, Laura Dern and even Dianne Weist are included in this film that allows the acting to be top notch, while the film is definitely not.

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Giancarlo De Lisi
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