1.)  Music played during the film: How is music used in the film to help develop the mood for the viewer? Examples?

There was different music throughout the film that influences how you feel at different times. In some of the more humerus parts, the music is a bit more upbeat. The upbeat music makes the scene feel a bit lighter compared to the other sad, heavy stuff. When Sam walking the dogs, the music is loud and upbeat and that makes you feel happy and a lot of us were smiling and laughing, Some parts have quieter, more sad sounding music and that makes the movie have a darker more real feel to it. When Sam is in court finding out that he can’t take Lucy home, the music is quiet and low beat to make the mood really sad and it worked because quite a few of us were tearing up and crying. It makes you realize that this is a real problem in the world and this happens to a lot of people. The music really makes you think about how this problem affects other people around the world and how we could be more like Rita, and help people in situations similar to Sam’s.

3.) Dynamic Characters are the ones who grow/learn and understand new things throughout the story. Is there evidence of any characters growing in the movie? Examples?

There are a few dynamic characters in the movie like Rita, Sam, and Lucy. Rita is a dynamic character because she starts out not wanting to help Sam at all because she doesn’t think he is worthy of her. She is too distracted by her more “important” cases and her son and she just doesn’t think he deserves her time and she thinks he is wasting it. Once she decides to do the case Pro Bono, all of her co-workers think she is strange and kind of a lower level person for taking Sam as a client. At first she is very defensive of Sam and her case, but eventually she loosens up and realizes that Sam is going through something that she can actually help with and she makes a connection with him and helps him get Lucy back. In the end, she takes Sams advice and leaves her husband and takes her son and they grow a whole new relationship that is so much better than their previous one with the son bouncing back and forth from parent to parent and sometimes having no parent with him or notice him. Another dynamic character is Sam. In the beginning, he doesn’t think he will be able to raise a daughter but he does and he loves her more than the world. Once Lucy is taken away, Sam realizes what he has to do to try and get her back so he works harder even though he doesn’t fully understand what is happening. He learns what kind of things he needs to do to take care of Lucy even better than he had been. He grows and learns more than he would usually be able to take in and he helps Lucy even though he knows she is passing him academically. Another dynamic character in the movie is Lucy. Lucy grows from being afraid to hurt her father and  kind of ashamed of him to understanding his situation and what he needs. At the beginning when she is reading “Stellaluna” she reads a sentence and changes the book because she was afraid she would hurt her father. Eventually she forgets how to read some words because she is afraid of passing her father academically. When she is taken away, she realizes that she shouldn’t be afraid of how smart she is, she should embrace it and help her father.

4.) This movie is told in Three Acts – can you distinguish when one act ends and another begins? Watch for evidence of three parts of this story line.

The three acts of the movie have a few signs but they are a little difficult to pin point. I think the first act is when Lucy is growing up and everyone is happy and it ends when Lucy is taken away. The second act is when they are in court fighting to get Lucy back with Sam and it ends when Lucy is given to her foster parents. The third act is from when Lucy is with her foster parents to the very end of the movie. I think these are the three acts because they all begin and end in realistic spots. The movie kind of changes moods in the different acts. The first act is more of a happy mood because they are happy and loving life. The second act is more of a worried more intense mood because Lucy is taken away and they are always in court fighting to get Lucy back. The third act feels more sad and kind of hopeful because Lucy is always going over to Sams house and eventually Sam gets Lucy back and that makes you feel hopeful.

5.) The movie centers around questions about Sam’s abilities and mental capacity, but there are times when Sam proves to be more insightful than other mature characters. What examples do you notice of this while watching?

In some parts of the movie Sam is more mature than the other adults talking to him. When they are in court arguing about Lucy’s well being, Sam keeps explaining to them that you don’t need to be super smart to be able to love and raise a child, you just need to know how to love them. He explains that you just need to be patient and loving even when they are being difficult. When he is talking to Rita about how he loves Lucy, he tells her that you don’t need to always be smarter than your kid to raise them, you just need patience and you need to know why you love them. This gets to Rita and she kind of gets mad and starts to kick things around and get mad at herself. She thinks about what Sam said and realized that she needs to spend more time with her son instead of just leaving him to raise himself.

6.) Rita’s life parallels Sam’s; this means his lawyer’s life has many similarities to his own. Can you identify those parallels?  

Rita’s life has some similarities to Sam’s. Sam and Rita both have a child that they love unconditionally. They can both be impossible sometimes like when they are ordering food in the cafeteria and Sam doesn’t want his greens and yellows together so he tells the worker and Rita tells him to stop being impossible. Rita then goes and orders a very complicated omelette with egg whites and chives and extra things that someone would have a difficult time making. They are both single parents raising a child and they are both having difficulties with the relationships with their children.  They also get judged by other people. Sam gets judged because of his mental disability. People think that he isn’t good enough of a parent and that he doesn’t deserve a child. People also judge Rita. They think that she is kind of mean to Sam at first but when she takes his case Pro Bono people think she is strange and that Sam isn’t worth her time.

7.) Camera angles can influence the way a scene is interpreted by a viewer. watch for any particular angles of the camera that are used to sway your perspective.

In the movie, the director uses different camera angles to give different perspective. When Sam is on the stand in court talking and the lawyer is questioning him, the camera moves to a different spot really quickly to make it feel more intense and it makes you feel like Sam is really stressed out. This makes this part of the movie seem really intense and fast moving. Another part that has different camera angles is when Sam has created the paper wall to block himself from the world. They zoomed in so you couldn’t tell the wall was there until they zoomed out. This makes the scene build up more tension to make it seem more dramatic than it is.