i am sam

New Line Productions
PG-13

Sam Dawson (Sean Penn) is a mentally-challenged father raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning) with the help of an extraordinary group of friends. As Lucy turns seven and begins to intellectually surpass her father, their close bond is threatened when their situation comes to the attention of a social worker who wants Lucy placed in foster care. Faced with a seemingly unwinnable case, Sam vows to fight the legal system and forms an unlikely alliance with Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), a high-powered, self-absorbed attorney who takes his case pro bona as a challenge from her colleagues. Together they struggle to convince the system that Sam deserves to get his daughter back and, in the process, fuse a bond that results in a unique testament to the power of unconditional love.

Discussion questions
Begin the conversation by asking folks to share what struck them about the film.  

At one point, Lucy starts to see her father differently. Instead of being a fun father, he becomes an embarrassment as she begins to see him through the eyes of her peers.

• Have you ever changed your opinion of someone else based on your friends’ opinion?

• Have you ever changed your opinion of yourself based on someone else’s opinion?

One of Rita’s most obvious characteristics is that she tells lies. (Telling her client that she was driving when she wasn’t, telling her husband that she had been waiting around for an hour after she had just arrived, etc.)

• How often do you tell lies?

• Have you ever been caught in a lie, or had to tell bigger and bigger lies to keep from being found out? What happened?

When they’re preparing his case, Rita asks Sam if he could tweak the truth—not lie, just tweak the truth. Sam has a hard time with this concept.

• What’s the difference between telling a lie and ‘tweaking the truth’ (sometimes referred to as telling a ‘little white lie’)?

• Why do you sometimes ‘tweak’ the truth?

• How can we change our lives so that we no longer need to ‘tweak’ the truth? Do we need to?

In the emotional scene when Sam tells Rita that she’s perfect, and that she can’t understand what it’s like to “Try and try and try and not get it,” she starts to cry and then goes on about how much of a failure she is.

• Have you ever had the privilege of getting to know someone really well, so well that you share with each other failures within yourself that you don’t share with most other people? What were the qualities of that person that enabled you to trust them?

• Why is it that when we share intimate details about ourselves, we often grow closer to the people we shared with?

• None of us is perfect. What does God have to say about that?

• Have you ever thought about growing closer to God by sharing your failures with God?

When Rita and Sam are preparing for the hearings, they get into a conversation about whether Lucy is smarter than Sam. Sam comes around to saying that Lucy is smarter at some things, and Sam is smarter at others.

• What do you think about that line of reasoning? Is Sam onto something, or just rationalizing?

• What is something that you aren’t able to do well, that others seem to be able to do with no problem? (e.g., computer work, singing, carpentry, painting and drawing, calculus, writing songs or poetry, dance, sports, etc.)

• Is someone who can do something you can’t smarter than you? Are you smarter than someone else because you can do what he or she can’t? From your perspective, how does society, the media or culture judge people to be successful, a failure, strong or weak? How does this compare to your view of people as a person of faith and a child of God? 

• Is Lucy a better person than Sam because she’s intellectually superior to him?

• Are you better than someone else because of your abilities?

Think about the characters in the film, especially Rita, Lucy, Sam, Sam’s friends, Annie, Randy (the foster-mother), the social worker, and the other lawyer. 

• Are they self-centered or other-centered? OR… Are they focused on themselves or on other people?

Look up the following scripture texts.
How do they relate to this movie?

• Matthew 5:1-12. Blessed are the ones who you don’t expect, who society says aren’t blessed. Maybe Jesus could have added ‘Blessed are the developmentally disabled.’

• Matthew 16:24-26. Christ calls us to live lives of service to others, denying ourselves in favor of serving those of God’s family who are in need. (Please be careful with the ‘deny yourself’ bit, making sure it focuses on service, not on self-destructive behaviors.)

• Philippians 2:1-4. Instead of placing the needs of yourself first, think first of what other people need.

• Romans 12:3-8 (see also 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4:7, 11-16). All of us—Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female, advanced, handicapped—are God’s children and members of God’s family.

• 1 John 4:7-13. God loved us first, and our first responsibility is to love others, all others, not just those we choose.

• Micah 6:6-8. God’s expectations of us are pretty simple and straightforward—to act justly, to practice kindness and to maintain humility before God. No animal sacrifices, no burning gifts on the altar, no advanced degrees, no applied mathematics, no 135 IQ. Be who you are, a humble servant of God, using the gifts God has given you.

• Jeremiah 1:4-8. Jeremiah tries to weasel his way out of serving God, saying he’s too young. Substitute “too anything,” and you have the excuse that most of us give for not serving God. But God tells Jeremiah (and us) that God promises to take care of us, and to give us the ability to do what God calls us to do, no matter who we are.

• Exodus 3:13-4:17 (esp. 4:10-17). Moses had all kinds of excuses for why he wasn’t the right choice to be God’s voice to Pharaoh, including a speech defect. God still made sure Moses understood that he was chosen as he was, even though he was not perfect.

In the end, most characters have been transformed by the power of love. How will you (as individuals and as a group) embody God’s love in a way that works to transform people’s lives?