I am Sam
I’ve just watched I am Sam (2001) on Channel 5 which took a good 2 hours and 45 minutes (total run time without advertisements is 132minutes though).
Days back, I was surprised to find the DVD sitting in the library’s video bookshelf and was pretty tempted to watch it. Yet I didn’t think that my friends would appreciate it (which I believe they had not heard about this movie before) thus dropping the idea. But it wasn’t that bad because we ended up watching Forrest Gump which was almost as good as this movie. (But we didn’t finish it, so I’ll follow-up when we I eventually do after 11 bloody years.)
I suspect I can’t do better at summarising the show better than those who’d already done so, so I’ll paste the plot summary by IMDB.com instead. In a nutshell:
Sam Dawson has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. He works at a Starbucks and is obsessed with the Beatles. He has a daughter with a homeless woman; she abandons them as soon as they leave the hospital. He names his daughter Lucy Diamond (after the Beatles song), and raises her. But as she reaches age 7 herself, Sam’s limitations start to become a problem at school; she’s intentionally holding back to avoid looking smarter than him. The authorities take her away, and Sam shames high-priced lawyer Rita Harrison into taking his case pro bono. In the process, he teaches her a great deal about love, and whether it’s really all you need.
When prompted if her daddy could provide her what she needs, Lucy answer, All you need is love.
That single sentence tells of the essense of the entire movie already. In the show, it says that the mentally-challenged doesn’t dictate the capability to love, give or receive and I couldn’t agree any more than I do now.
Lucy: Daddy? Why are you like that?
Sam: What do you mean?
Lucy: You’re different.
Sam: Yeah, but what do you mean?
Lucy: You’re not like other daddies.
Sam: I’m sorry.
Lucy: No, daddy it’s ok. It’s ok. Nobody else’s daddy ever comes to the park.
[Sam giggles]
Sam: That’s true!
Taking example from the show, would you rather be a rich lawyer’s son who has everything provided for you in terms of monetary needs when you don’t get to see your parents often or at all, or be a mentally-challenged daddy who gives you the attention you ever need and tries to provide you his best. This is a daddy who would listen, or pretend to listen even if he’s too preoccupied, as he said in his testimonials at court.
Don’t get too technical, please try and grasp the idea instead of telling me “you want a mentally-challenged daddy?”, thanks.
It’s ironic that you’re either successful enough to provide a good life in terms of monetary needs for your child or you’re a blue-collar worker who can only provide mediocre life but can spend time with your child. One has only 24 hours a day, and one can only do so much in that 24 hours. And in most cases, as a child, thank god and be blessed that you even have a family to take care of you.
How does one even decide if another one is capable of handling certain things? I wonder. This show left me tons of thoughts and I’m still thinking. And it made me realised that doing things that I thought is beneficial for someone else is in fact bullshit as we don’t know what they really want. What we’re concerned is what we think they want, and that’s often a big mistake. In this show, the law decided that Lucy will be better with some foster family who are capable of providing her what she needs, but can they really provide the love she needs of her natural father? Can they?
A special highlight is that the daddy gets exceptionally excited at parties when playing with the children and that brought shame to the daughter for the children laughed at his extraordinary behavior as an adult. Truth be told, actually I would be shamed too, but how many of us had secretly hoped that our parents would be as interested and as excited as we wished that they had been in certain occasions? I knew I had.
To put this movie to words would shame the crew’s hard works. So please go watch the show and if you’re exceptionally emotional, bring along alot of tissues for it’s a real bad tear-jerker. And it’s a great show, at least in my book it is — it was a well spent 2 odd hours.