Missing
out
I Am Sam, dir. Jessie Nelson. Sam is intellectually disabled, Annie is socially disabled, Margaret is disabled by regulations and Rita is disabled by a hunger for perfection. You may have noticed a pattern emerging. I am Sam has a good point to make, it just makes it too many times and with not nearly enough nuance. The point is this: bringing up a child is confusing, challenging, frightening, even disabling at times, but if you show abundant and unconditional love your child will probably come up trumps. A handsome sentiment and basically true, but what thunderous complexities it fails to acknowledge.
Despite
having the intellectual capacity of a child, Sam (Sean Penn, right) has
cared for his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning, far right) for nearly seven
years as a single parent. When her intellectual capacity starts to challenge
his own, child welfare authorities step in, believing the unconventional
situation is detrimental to Lucy's development. Lucy is put into care,
but Sam vows to get her back.
I am Sam is about judgment and love and how painfully blind we can be when it comes to judging others. If you want a good weep and sniffle, this film is right on the money, but it just doesn't quite pull off the very difficult (granted) task it sets itself. Sadly, Sam's intellectual disability becomes a dull metaphor for the mistakes and confusions of any parent and in so doing fails to acknowledge the individual realities of bringing up kids, disabled or not.
-Siobhan Jackson
Crossing the bar
Last Orders, dir. Fred Schepisi. There are faint echoes of Chaucer in this delightful film. It follows a group of friends on a pilgrimage to fulfil the last wishes of one of their boozy company that his ashes be scattered from Margate pier. They even visit Canterbury on their way, but the tales they tell (mostly to us, not each other) are the bitter-sweet flashbacks of memory, not episodes of instructive fiction. These flashbacks explore the pains and complex triumphs that lie beneath the phlegmatic surface of the lives of these ordinary men and their women.
Australian Fred Schepisi has gathered an extraordinary cast of British stars to bring to life his adaptation of Graham Swift's prize-winning novel. Michael Caine plays butcher Jack Dodds whose post-mortem instructions are the last orders of the title. The film opens with Jack's friends Ray (Bob Hoskins), Vic (Tom Courtenay) and Lenny (David Hemmings) meeting with his son Vince (Ray Winstone) in their local pub for a priming ale before their uncomfortable journey begins. An uneasy presence is the urn containing Jack's ashes and an uneasy absence is his wife Amy (Helen Mirren) who cannot bring herself to make the trip. Instead she is visiting their severely retarded daughter June (Laura Morelli) in the institution to which she has been confined for 50 years without a single visit from her father. June has never shown a flicker of recognition of her mother. Vince's connection with his father is real but ambiguous.
As the past unravels in layers of flashback, we learn of the betrayals, compromises and delicacies that have formed these lives. Caine's nudge-wink Jack beautifully complements Hoskins' restrained portrait of the reticent, overshadowed Ray who is nonetheless a semi-professional gambler. David Hemmings is fine as the ex-boxer Lenny full of menacing grievance, while Tom Courtenay's undertaker Vic presents a dignified, wry fulcrum for the group. Ray Winstone's Vince shows the virtues of understated acting and, as the young Jack, J.J. Feild gives a flamboyant, insinuating portrayal of irresponsible charm.
One might cavil at a few plot tricks, and at the end there is the now-common British fantasy of Australia as a distant paradise, but this is a film not to miss. Don't wait around for closing time.
-Tony Coady
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