I Am David (2003)

Let's be realistic.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

a history lesson. more profound than you expect. an admirable young actor. who creates his character with his all senses. a way. meets. and landscapes. and a terrible manner of experiences to give strange, dark and not ordinary meanings to the life. a film who escapes from the easy solutions temptation. and who transforms the viewer in part of a special experience about survive. it is not comfortable to define or write the right review about a film about pain and courage. about the force and the wisdom to survive. and this does it an useful lesson of history. not in ordinary way. but as the tool for understand the lives of many people from East, different ages and genres and pasts. for see. the struggle behind words. so, more than a film or a real case or a touching story. maybe, a remember. or warning.

The movie definitely took some liberties. It is quite different. The similarities is basically the major thing. The striking the match plan is the same, as well where his bundle is and his trip to Denmark. Except that the bundle comes with soap, for which he asked for in the book, he starts in Bulgaria and travels to Salonica by hiding in a truck and he gets caught on a fence to add suspense. Also, he has to bring an envelope along with him. The sailor finds hims and gives him a life vest, but he has to trade his knife. He gets to land and discovers beauty, as in the book. He then goes into to town where he makes up the circus story for a baker. Then the baker tells him about St. Elizabeth and asks him to smile for bread. In the book, he was first asked to smile by the old British couple, who are not in the movie. Then, the baker calls in cop on him and he barely gets away. Something the screenwriter decided should happen. He also doesn't get his free bread. Then in a flashback, we find that Johannes is shot. Something else different. This is when David decides he should have a god. Not when he loses his compass though. Plus his choice is St. Elizabeth, no the god of still water ad green pastures. This completely eliminates the conversation with the priest which was an interesting part in the book. His first job he is given in the movie is by and old woman who wants him to deliver wine to a party. Which of course, never happened in the book. He then tries to buy stuff in a store but is shooed off, which never happened in the book either. It's here, I should mention that it keeps true to the book by showing him learning from Johannes. Then kind of ruins it by having him remember his mom and being brought here. That destroys David finding himself, as he already knows what happened. Finally, something in the book happens. He meets the American couple who need gas. He does not resent them though and deny their money, later finding it. He just takes it. Then the fight with Carlo happens and he then rescues Maria form the barn. Hear come more differences. He does not have a conversation right after and there is no Andrea. He does learn about the globe and silverware, as in the book. And when he's leaving, he contemplates taking soap, but that's it for similarities for now. He actually has a confrontation with the parents, instead of leaving a letter. He also leaves without knowledge of Maria. That is so crucial, because this is when David first voluntarily hugs somebody. Later on he never sees the newspaper ad or learns not to hate Carlo and writes the apology letter. Then another entirely made up scene comes. There's a riot in the street and David get locked up because an officer thought he threw a rock at him. He does manage to escape. He then does get a lift to his next destination. But, it's from the sailor he met, not the Italian lorre driver. He then meets the artist who paints him. They're driving to her house when they are stopped at the border where David is nearly found out. As you can see, the director obviously thought it needed more close calls. We also find out Sophie's last name is Anderson, not Bang. When they get her house, his strange eyes are mentioned. What seemed to be a major part of the book and David's character, they are mentioned once. Sophie has a dead son backstory and a cat, both not mentioned in the book. Unlike the book, he stays the night. He goes to a store with Sophie and finds out about his mom by a book, not by Sophie being good friends with her. Then, in a scene change, he is boarding an airplane to Denmark to see his mom. This COMPLETELY skips out his incident with the farmer. He also never meets his faithful companion King, who taught David dogs are smart, brave and trustworthy. It also skips his treacherous trip through Germany. He just flies straight to his mommy. The End. I liked the book "I Am David," but I like it even more now. Sometimes a lousy movie can enhance your reading experience. The book gives so much more insight from David's point of view and more meaningful storyline. The only big problem I had with the book was the ending, but the movie does even less for the ending. It's like they ran out of budget. The plot is just changed so much, it's barely and adaption. The book is far superior. Book rating: 7/10 Movie rating: 3.5 out of 10

The historical basis of brutal deprivation and summary shootings in a post-WW2 Bulgarian prison camp is uncertain. Director-actor Paul Feig nonetheless portrays a Nazi-style horror with slave-camp beatings and a summary shooting over a bar of soap. It matters not whether this is Communist or Nazi, it is just evil, out there somewhere.For some unknown reason, one of the psychotics running the camp decides to help a boy (David, Ben Tibber) to escape, giving him his ID papers in an envelope and telling him to take the envelope to Denmark, without telling him why or what it contains. This preposterous premise should signal that we are in a silly scenario that cannot be taken seriously.This is further reinforced when David, who is presumably Danish, has no difficulty communicating with the multiple language-speakers he encounters on his trip. These days, such nonsense could only come from an American, and Paul Feig acts in his own film in the most absurd scene of all, when, playing an English-speaker, he gropes for Italian to talk to David, who has been talking English throughout. Real Europeans now use sub-titles and genuine languages.David's expressionless journey through a non-specific rural Italy into the arms of a non-specific Swiss resident is strictly for the hankie-clutchers who have no disbelief to suspend. I'm afraid mine reared up in outrage when the film showed a uniformed policeman with his cap on in church, something unthinkable that Paul Feig doesn't know, although he was willing to lard the scene with a bellowing church choir, and drape the Swiss village with happy well-adjusted cousins of the Von Trapp family.When David finds a book with his mother's picture on the back and makes a gee-whizz expression we know the resolution is nigh, and with the help of the Swiss national air-line, he is reunited with the bitch who wbo abandoned him in the torture camp, sorry, his ever-loving and faithful mother. Feig is true to style when he shows a seated airplane passenger wearing a fedora. For hankie-clutchers only: normal viewers avoid with care.

When I sat down to watch "I Am David", I was not expecting something monumental. I was not expecting an extraordinary experience even though one tends to when relating to films of this genre and category. "I Am David" is an independent film by Paul Freig about a young boy (Ben Tibber) who escapes from a Stalinist prison camp and makes a long journey to Denmark for freedom and reunification with someone both he and us are totally uninformed about until the last few moments of the picture and when it does come about, the question we ask is: why did they wait this long to inform us? Why did they waste so much time with all of the stuff we didn't care about? "I Am David" is a letdown of the most disappointing level. And by that I mean, I almost hate myself for having to pan this film. The movie has very, very good intentions and yes, it does have a few tender moments that unfortunately wrap up after a matter of seconds. But still, even at a short length of ninety minutes, "I Am David" is really nothing more than a session of ennui.The fault of this movie goes to the screenplay, which was also written by director Paul Freig. When it comes to tearjerkers, which is what this film was meant to be, an intelligent screenplay is absolutely imperative. It's a given. You need a strong story and good characters otherwise you are left with nothing to hold your interest. And "I Am David" has none of that. The story is absolutely flimsy with twelve-year-old David wandering about the countryside, meeting far too many people, staring at things which do not hold our interest as well as his', and mingles with these rather dull flashbacks that are intended to show the real horror of the evil of that days of Stalin's rule. David encounters a great many people and these just prove to be scenes that go into and out of nowhere. I counted at least three long parts to this film that could have either been reworked or excised.But what's worse of all is that little David is almost entirely on the screen and we never, not even once, sympathize or identify with him. David is well-played by Tibber, so the young actor is not to blame. It's the screenplay that is owed the blame. We never come to understand this tragic kid, he's less confused than we are, we don't relate to him, we don't even come to like him because he's such a flat, dull character. When you've got a film that focuses entirely upon one single character, you need to have a strong figure of a human being to begin with. Take for example, James Stewart's character in "Vertigo" (1958), where the film follows his struggles and experiences almost entirely throughout the course of the film, and we come to understand him, sympathize with him, pity him, and relate to him because he's such a well-realized three-dimensional character that we forget we're looking at Jimmy Stewart and not an actual living person with actual problems. Now David in "I Am David" most certainly has problems, but we still don't come to terms with him. And as for the supporting cast, which comes and goes regularly, never leaves any impact during or after their stay.Ultimately, as good as the intentions of Paul Freig were, "I Am David" does not strike with the impact that it was undoubtedly intended to. I appreciated the ambition of this movie very much, for it is tackling a serious subject, but it just does not work because of a rather flimsy story. And again, with such a serious subject as the reign of Stalin and the people who suffered, without a strong story, there is no hope.