Plot
Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a man with a developmental disability, is the single father of Lucy (Dakota Fanning), following their abandonment by her mother. Despite his limitations, Sam is well-adjusted and has a supportive group of friends with developmental disabilities, as well as a kind, agoraphobic neighbor Annie (Dianne Wiest) who takes care of Lucy when Sam cannot. Though Sam provides a loving and caring environment for precocious Lucy, she soon surpasses his mental ability. Other children tease her for having a "retard" as a father, and she becomes too embarrassed to accept that she is more intellectually advanced than Sam. In preparation for a custody case, a social worker turns up at Lucy's birthday party and takes her away, allowing Sam two supervised visits per week.
On the advice of his friends, Sam approaches a high-powered lawyer, Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose brusque manner, fast-paced schedule and difficult personal life have earned her a reputation as cold and unfeeling. In an attempt to prove to others that she is not heartless, Rita surprisingly agrees to take on Sam's case pro bono. As they work together to secure Sam's parental rights, Sam unwittingly helps Rita with her family problems, including encouraging her to leave her philandering husband and repairing her factious relationship with her son.
At the trial, Sam breaks down after opposing counsel convinces him that he is not capable of being a father. After the trial, Lucy resides in a foster home with Randy Carpenter (Laura Dern), but tries to convince Sam to help her run away, and continually escapes in the middle of the night to go to Sam's apartment, whereupon he immediately returns her. Ultimately, the foster family who planned to adopt Lucy decide to return her to Sam, with an arrangement that Randy will help him raise her.
The final scene depicts a soccer game, refereed by Sam, in which Lucy participates as a player. In attendance are the foster family, Sam's friendship group, and a newly-single Rita with her son.
Read more about this topic: I Am Sam
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“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)