Lucy in the sky with diamonds. (A review of the movie I am Sam)
For my first official publication on this site, I’ve decided to write on a movie, basically a movie review of some sorts. So I decided on I am Sam.
A synopsis I got of the film from Wikipedia described I Am Sam as a 2001 American drama film about Sam Dawson, a Starbucks barista with an intellectual ability who following abandonment by a woman he had a sexual encounter with becomes the single father of a child whom he calls lucy diamond Dawson after the lyrics to a beetle song “lucy in the sky with diamonds” (which you no doubt realise is where i got the title for this from). The movie follows the struggle that follows soon after, the challenges the protagonist Sam Dawson has to face raising Lucy….. but not all on his own—he receives help from friends in his support group, his agoraphobic neighbour( the meaning of which I just found out) and things seem to be going swell for a while that is until as is common in movies there’s a plot twist which in this case cannot be defined as a plot twits as I believe plot twists to be a surprise, this one was not, I mean I saw it coming the minute he’d used the round pinback button badge to hold the diaper edges in place at the very first diaper change after he had brought Lucy home.
As Lucy reaches the age of 7, which also happens to be the official intellectual age of her father Sam, issues are raised concerning the ability of her father to provide her with an adequate childhood, which given everything and without sentimentality the courts decide he is not, as his lawyer he employs Rita Harrison Williams a top lawyer that agrees to take him on pro bono who has a story of her own, divorced and currently estranged with her young son, she struggles with her role as a parent in her son life’s, convinced that he hates her. Together they are faced with the legal system which deems Sam as unfit to raise Lucy.
One of the official flyers for the movie had the lines “Love is all you need” which is pretty much the idea the movie pushes forward. That love is all Lucy needs. A critic review I read on the movie stated that the movie held too much sentimentality and that the idea that all Lucy needed was love would not hold in the real world and that that idea might help her now as a kid but much later that it would be a danger to her, how would sam deal with the drama and needs of teenage lucy. Well, I have written this in an attempt to decipher all of this and while doing so convince you that this movie would be a good enough watch.
What does Lucy need?
“Lucy diamond dawson hi, you’re my daughter, i’m your father”
Those lines above else had been the gripping moment at the beginning of the movie for me and had provided an insight into the character Sam, beginning with a popular Beetles song and ending with a name for his daughter. I had thought it mindless mumblings at first but it had proved to not be, it showed that despite the character’s disability, he understood fully who Lucy was to him. There had been various controversies surrounding what the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds meant, but Sam had associated it with the warm feelings he had felt on looking at his daughter, it also didn’t hurt that he was a Beetles fan so he had named her Lucy Diamond Dawson, not a stutter in his declarations, just the same as any father would have named their child.
Sam had a disability we would now place on the autism spectrum, with his intellectual disability being restricted to not exceeding the age of seven. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in social communication and accompanied by repetitive behaviors, activities, and interests. A statistic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that about 1 in 100 children in the world have ASD, the CDC estimated that about 1% of the world’s population have ASD, which would be over 75 million people. So if we should go like this would it mean that all 75 million people would be questioned as to their ability to be good parents if they decide to have children? But then in light of the subtitle this, this seems like digressing from the point, more what’s best for Sam than what’s best for Lucy, but what if we could create a world where we could cater to both.
“You’re not like other daddies”
Here in a diner, Lucy tells her dad these lines and here we see the slow comprehension of his features, his fear maybe even realization of the fact but she is quick to reassure him that she thinks him being different is good, it gives us an insight into their dynamic with lucy assuming a perceived adult role but I believe the role of reassurance sometimes doesn’t just fall on the parent, sometimes parents need reassurance too, which as the movie unfolds is seen in the case of Rita (sam’s lawyer) and her son.
“It makes me happy hearing you read”
This line was taken after Sam was called to Lucy’s school, where Lucy’s teacher expressed some concerns regarding Lucy’s cognitive ability. Implying that his disability was somehow limiting Lucy’s ability, which much later as Lucy reads to Sam out loud we find to be true. Sam being made to understand that this was the problem, knew what to look for and so in this scene, he confronts Lucy when she opts out of reading a book, claiming not to be able to pronounce a word. Sam, being her father, knows that that is not right, he knows his daughter knows the word and so he calls her out on it. The conversation may not have gone how a neurotypical one might have gone (but if we’re being completely honest there might not have been much difference), but it had its desired effect. Lucy now knows that her father wants her to grow, that her father is not bothered by the fact that she is smarter, and that he wants that, just like any good father would.
“And now we’re moving on to 4D, Parker vs. Van Wert”
This line occurs when as a result of a perceived solicitation between Sam and a prostitute and a series of cascading events, Sam loses custody of Lucy to the state. In this scene, he is seen in a troubled state with a perceived misunderstanding of what the judge is saying. Still, personally, I believe he understood, the acceptance of the consequence of the verdict was just what was hard to accept, which would be the same for any parent, but why this line stuck with me was the swiftness with which the judge moved on to the next case, with no regard for the scene before her. But then again maybe seeing numerous scenes like that day after day reduces one’s sensitivity to them so I shouldn’t judge. Still, that exact moment serves its purpose, it serves to shine a light on the various insensitivities civilization is guilty of, other people’s pain, seeing all pain as the same and responding with nonchalance and it’s not asking for preferential treatment, it’s asking for basic human understanding, that one thing that is shown in movies, causing tears to pool at your eyes at every touching scene. Those little acts that leave you believing bad endings aren’t completely bad or maybe i’m just guilty of sentimentality.
“When your son O.D.’d did you feel that you might have made mistakes”
This line was taken from the very first custody hearing Sam had had with his lawyer Rita. this line had stuck with me because I have watched various movies depicting various court hearings. It had always pissed me off when the lawyer I was rooting for in the movie completely bouched the case by not asking the right questions or at least obvious questions I believe should be asked, now my law knowledge is as much as the common man, there had been the choice to study law at one point in my life. Still, i had opted out of it, way too much, “this versus that” and “the state of”, or maybe it’s because of my latent indifference to authority but outside of all that I think this predicament influences anyone who has ever seen a movie or a show, the idea that we could do better, it’s the same thing with the doctor movies, you hear something and suddenly the next visit to the doctor’s office you’re suggesting you might have LUPUS just from a skin rash. But basically, this line stuck with me because it showed Rita, a lawyer prepared to defend her , so if client you are into movies like that and would like to see Rita skirt around the lines of sentimentality and laws to get her client what she believes is his, then you should watch this movie
“Your honour, please let the record show “my mother raised me”
This line I took from one of the court proceedings in the movie, among one of the witnesses Rita calls in defense of her client Sam, a woman raised by a mother with a disability, here Rita tries to establish precedent between sams’s case the woman life in support of Sam’s claim to the custody of Lucy. During the questioning of the witness, Rita builds a beautiful story, asking the right questions and most importantly receiving the right replies, there is no evidence of angst in the witness, she calmly answers each question and is straight to the point, but usually in court movies, a lawyer questioning his or her witness is not something to be worried about, its when the other side begins their cross-examination that we find ourselves shaking our heads in disappointment, but this had not been the case with this witness, the line above, are the words declared by the witness, after the opposing lawyer attempts to make a lie of what she knows to be true of her childhood. It had me thinking “Finally one of the good ones”.
“People like me feel lost and little and ugly and dispensable…….. People like me have sons that hate them, and I’ve screamed horrible things to him…… and then he looks at me with such anger and I hate him then, I know I’m failing you, I know I’m disappointing you, I know you deserve better but get in the fucking car…….no matter how hard I try, somehow I’ll never be enough”
Sometimes, we need, people to tell us, louder than the raging voices in our heads that we are enough. Some movies are guilty of placing the focus only on the main characters, or of not telling other stories despite that of the main character, but this movie is not, it tells Sam’s story, Lucy’s, Rita’s, and then there is the final one, the one with which I believe if she was absent the movie would not be what it was.
“She couldn’t sleep, I think so she came to my house”
After Sam loses the first custody battle, Lucy is given to a foster family and there we meet Randy, Lucy’s foster mother, in this scene, Lucy leaves her foster home in the middle of the night and goes to Sam’s house. This scene resonated with me because, in this scene, Sam returns Lucy to her foster home that night, at this point, he is still pushing for custody of Lucy but he returns her nonetheless. Maybe it was because he understood that if he had kept her it would have hurt his chances but then maybe it wasn’t that either.
“Randy, if i tell you a secret that i can’t do it by myself, will you tell the judge on me……because i always wanted Lucy to have a mother…..help, i need somebody, help, not just anyone and you’re the red in her painting”
In the scene from the line above, we find Sam admitting that he can’t do it alone, just before the last hearing in the movie. In this scene Randy brings Lucy to Sam in the middle of the night, fully accepting that Lucy needs her father and that no matter how much she might want Lucy what Lucy needs might not be her, but Sam refutes this, he tells her that Lucy’s needs them both.
And so it is from all of this that I draw my proof to refute the critic’s claim i mentioned at the beginning of this and by extension the line that “all you need is love” because it wasn’t all Lucy needed and it wasn’t all she would get. Lucy had been surrounded by support systems even before Randy or the state, and they had all contributed to her upbringing, although one could argue about their stability, they were support systems nonetheless. But in the end, Lucy had her father, her mother, her father’s friends, her Agarophobic neighbor, and oh yeah that lawyer from that one time the state tried to take her away from her father and the lawyer’s kid.
In my country we have a saying “It takes a village to raise a child” and Lucy would have that village. And when the future came that she would need more than love, she would have it.
I am Sam starring
Sean Penn as Samuel John "Sam" Dawson
Michelle Pfeiffer as Rita Harrison Williams
Dianne Wiest as Annie Cassell
Dakota Fanning as 6-year-old Lucy Diamond Dawson
Laura Dern as Miranda "Randy" Carpenter
Is a beautiful watch, filled with sentimentality, hope, and ideas that just might work in the real world so if you’re looking for a movie with the above needs then you should add this movie to your watch list.
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