Movie Info

RATING:

PG for thematic elements and violent content

RELEASE:

Dec. 3, 2004

GENRE:

Drama

STARRING:

Ben Tibber, James Caviezel, Joan Plowright, Maria Bonnevie, Silvia De Santis

WRITERS:

Paul Feig,
Anne Holm

DIRECTOR:

Paul Feig

DISTRIBUTOR:

Lions Gate Films

 

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MOVIE REVIEW

'I Am David'

By Nathaniel Bell

What's This?

CBN.com - It’s easy to mistake I Am David for a WWII drama, with its gulags and fascist villains, but the film actually takes place just after the war. Based on Anne Holm’s young adult novel and directed by newcomer Paul Feig (who also wrote the screenplay), this resolutely old fashioned family adventure follows the destiny of 12-year-old David (Ben Tibber) as he flees from an Eastern European labor camp. Carrying nothing but a sealed letter and a compass, he heads for Denmark with orders to deliver his cargo. His journey, of course, is fraught with peril.

I Am David begins with a fairly gripping escape in which David dodges searchlights, climbs barbed-wire fences, and slips past armed guards into the safety of the countryside. What follows is a revelatory odyssey involving chance encounters with chatty Italian seamen, a friendly Sicilian baker, and an aristocratic family who allow David a moment’s solace. Providing the story with dramatic heft is David’s anguished search for personal identity. Haunted by memories of his mother, David marches on toward an uncertain destination. He’s like a love-starved Dickensian orphan, bewildered and sorely alone.

Feig’s camera is infatuated with David’s face, a pensive, serious visage that implies a grownup’s maturity. Tibber is the right choice for this role; he doesn’t ply for affection like most kid actors would. In flashbacks that contain some of the film’s finer passages, Jim Caviezel plays Johannes, a bespectacled father figure who teaches David about life outside the camp. When David steals a bar of soap (the film is full of “cleansing” imagery), Johannes winds up taking the rap.

Feig, who scored a hit with the television series Freaks and Geeks, falters during some of the more crucial dramatic moments, and at this point in his career, lacks an assured sense of pacing. I Am David is relentlessly episodic in style and surprisingly small in scope despite its epic ambitions (though the Bulgarian locations are picturesque). It eventually finds its dramatic footing in the later scenes with Joan Plowright, who exudes grandmotherly kindness as an English expatriate who helps smuggle David across the Swiss border.

The movie, with its choppy editing and ill-fitting soundtrack, is probably better suited for the small screen (perhaps as a miniseries), yet the story is so saturated with emotion it’s impossible not to get a lump in the throat. It dares to be hopeful and life affirming in a way that most Hollywood products completely ignore. When David learns to smile, you too may be smiling through your tears.

I Am David is rated PG for thematic elements and violent content.