I love songs of the Beatles, so I listened to the soundtrack for countless times. However, somehow I have never watched the movie itself. I just managed to do so.
As a person who devoted a considerable amount of time for alternative care system in Japan, the movie gave me a mixed feeling. Every year, around 8,000 kids in Japan are forced to leave their biological parents, and the reasons are mixed — abuse, poverty, parents’ disease, imprisonment of the parents, etc., and to the certain extent the movie touched upon all of them (also I am quite used to hear what the prosecutor in the movie says). The reasons often overlap — a person with an issue of intellectual capability often earns less money, which leads to poverty, and sometimes having kids under the circumstances is considered abuse.
The movie nicely describes the reality that love alone may not be enough to be a good parent. Although parental love is the most important asset that the parents can give to their kids, the other factors are also worth consideration. There is no clear-cut answer to the question, “who should be his/her parent(s)”, and that is why the people in the industry always spend a huge amount of time to think through the best option, though sometimes their answer is proven to be wrong in the future.
I didn’t like the ending part because it is a bit unrealistic, but “I Am Sam” was a nice movie in that it didn’t make the intellectually challenged parent’s situation just a simple stupid happy love story. Being a parent is not easy, and we all live with it anyhow.
