JAIBHAKTI MOVIE REVIEW: "I AM DAVID"

"I Am David" (click on title for information)

PAUL FEIG: Writer/Director

If you don't cry during this movie, you aren't alive.

This past weekend, I watched "I am David" three times (on IFC: the Independent Film Channel). Ben Tibber, the young man who played David, deserved an Oscar nod for his performance as a young man who escapes from a Stalinist Labor Camp and heads out on a journey to find his true home, which is illustrated in colorful flashbacks throughout the film. The movie works because the whole is created by a cast of superior parts: the acting, the scenery, the wardrobes, the dialogue, and most especially Stewart Copeland's magnificent score, moves the story along at the most appropriate pace--the exact pace you would expect a young person of David's stature to absorb and assimilate his experiences. Never boring; always intriguing; my only wish is that the movie went into greater detail: the movie could have easily gone on for another half hour.

Joan Plowright's character is one of the all-time most compassionate, most humane characters I have ever scene on film. I wish so much her character to be an actual person: I would relish the chance to visit her for a spot of tea or sit beside her while painting watercolors of the lush scenery down by her favorite lake. The character she created shall forever be etched in my mind, and for that I thank her. She truly has made the world a better place by creating a character whom I believe we all should aspire to match in compassion, grace, and good humor.

At the end of the movie, "Cold Water", the very poignant and appropriate Damien Rice song, pulls us deeper and deeper into our hearts as the story comes to an end...which is really just the beginning. In my mind I bent down and swept David up in my arms, kissed his forehead, and told him I loved him. I believe you will too.

tags: Jaibhakti, Bhakti Brophy, I Am David, Joan Plowright, Ben Tibber, Paul Feig, Jim Caviezel, Damien Rice, Stewart Copeland,

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