The mentally handicapped are people too.

I want to go ahead and make sure we’re all on the same page with this right off the bat. I don’t want to mislead anyone here. Because, apparently New Line Cinema feels that an enormous amount of people out there don’t understand that the mentally handicapped are people too. In fact, they feel so strongly about this that they’ve taken it upon themselves to educate the masses by releasing I Am Sam, the story of a mentally challenged father (Sean Penn as Sam Dawson) trying to win back custody of his 7 year old daughter after Children’s Services have taken her away from him. Isn’t that nice of them?

I Am Sam is a feel-good movie in the worst possible sense of the term. New Line Cinema doesn’t really expect to change anyone. They know as well as the rest of us that the Americans who harbor prejudice against the mentally challenged won’t spend $10 to see this film. No, this film exists for the sake of all of us politically correct people, so that we may cheer for Sam in his struggle and pat ourselves on the back for our own open-mindedness. In that sense, it’s nothing more than a big-budget stroke session. Not surprisingly, though, I Am Sam turns into an offensive monstrosity by condescending not only to its audience, but also to the protagonist with whom it claims to empathize.

First of all, each and every scene in the film hinges on Sam’s low intelligence--everyone he interacts with treats him like a “retard.” To some, that means treating him as if he were an incompetent animal, to others it means treating him with a syrupy sweetness--either way, Sam’s mental handicap remains his one defining characteristic. Granted, we’ve all witnessed real-life examples of people treating others differently because of their external qualities, but for a film that supposedly sets out to unearth the humanity of an often-abused person, it sure limits Sam to a one-dimensional existence.

For example, when Sam’s daughter (Dakota Fanning) gets taken away from him, he attempts to hire a lawyer (Michelle Pfeiffer as Rita Harrison) to win her back. Initially, she brushes him off because he can’t afford her fees. In order to get rid of him, she tells Sam that she’ll give him the phone number of an associate that might be able to handle his case, even though she has absolutely no intention of doing so. When Sam returns for the phone number, Rita tells him she lost it. As she tells him, her eyes dart back and forth. She folds her arms and scratches her nose. She gets visibly nervous. A child would be able to recognize that she’s lying--why would we accept that Sam wouldn’t recognize it? The filmmakers expect us to accept this lack of recognition as a symptom of his low intelligence. Yet, earlier in the film his daughter (a much better liar than Rita) attempts to lie to him and he sees completely through her deception. Inconsistencies such as this turn Sam’s mental handicap as a mere device and reveal the filmmakers’ interest in the character as a distant, judgmental affection--as if toward a dog--and not empathy.

Secondly, the world in which Sam lives can be divided into two types of people: good guys and bad guys. The good guys believe that Sam should raise his daughter. The bad guys think she should be taken away. If at any point a character changes his or her mind--say Sam wins them over--they immediately switch from being a bad guy to being a good guy. Wouldn’t it be nice if real life were like that? If we could evaluate whether a person is good or evil simply by the way they feel about one particular issue? That way, we could avoid the people who disagree with us and only fraternize with those who view everything the exact same way we do.

Richard Shiff (of The West Wing), who plays the opposing lawyer, manages to create the only character exempt from this type of black-and-white judgment by underplaying his scenes, revealing the sensitivity and true concern of his character, and refusing to give in to the obvious prejudices inherent in the script. In doing so, he becomes the one actor to walk away from I Am Sam unscathed.

I Am Sam’s view of parenthood best exemplifies the film’s myopia. Apparently, writers Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson read in one of those “How to Write Screenplays” books that if you mindlessly repeat certain actions or situations “theme” will magically appear, so they include in I Am Sam myriad examples of horrid parenting: The merciless taskmaster whispering instructions to his 6 year old during a school presentation, the couple in the midst of a divorce--neither of whom want custody of their child, a mother made to feel guilty for her son’s overdose, an implied devastating relationship between Sam’s neighbor (Diane Wiest) and her father. Even Rita Harrison and her husband have a neglectful relationship with her son. The only person who seems to have an ideal parent-child relationship is a woman brought in to testify on Sam’s behalf that was raised by a woman with an IQ of 70. As all these examples pile up, it becomes more and more evident that Sam is, in fact, the perfect father. Go figure. Again, I Am Sam manages to turn what could be perceived as a complex issue into a one-sided morality lesson.

And let’s not even get started on the gratuitous product placement that runs rampant throughout the film. Sam works at Starbucks, and one of the opening shots shows him turning coffee cups so that the Starbucks logo faces directly into the camera. Later he works at Pizza Hut. Same thing. It’s bad enough that Sam Dawson is written as a stereotype--now he’s a coffee-shilling, pizza-promoting, singing, dancing corporate mascot.


The people who tell you that they enjoyed I Am Sam will do so because of the guilt. This film, as is the case with most feel-good films, actually blackmails its audience into siding with the protagonist by convincing them that--if they don’t sympathize with Sam--they are, in fact, the bad guys. So nobody ever feels anything resembling empathy for Sam Dawson. Instead, they feel a condescending, distant sympathy. In forcing the viewer to feel this way, I Am Sam inevitably ends up stripping Sam Dawson, a mentally challenged man, of his humanity.





Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age