I remember the day well. It was a lazy spring evening, humid from the encroaching summer, and with a bottle of Merlot sitting on my coffee table at home waiting to be uncorked, the only thing I needed was a good movie. I was on my second perusal of the New Release aisles at my preferred video store when I heard her voice emanating from the array of televisions hanging from the ceiling. I stopped in my tracks and gazed in profound wonderment at the nearest screen. I had discovered Dakota.

She captured me so completely and so immediately. She had a presence on the screen that few actors ever achieve. For someone so young, so small, and so inexperienced to have such an aura of wisdom and at the same time project an innocence and vulnerability was surreal. This dichotomy offered me a paradox I simply couldn't resist.

Suffice it to say, that evening I rented I Am Sam.

And Dakota Fanning is a paradox. Having subsequently watched her in many interviews, she effuses a confidence and intelligence of someone who has lived two lifetimes. All that somehow neatly packaged in such a small, adorable, and utterly unassuming little girl.

I Am Sam tells the story of a mentally retarded man named Sam, played by Sean Penn, who, through circumstances we never quite learn, knocks up a homeless girl who runs off after giving birth, leaving Sam to care for his newborn daughter. Sam isn't completely alone. He has his close-knit group of similarly disabled friends for moral support, and his seriously agoraphobic but highly educated neighbor Annie for giving advice on raising his daughter Lucy.

With a brief interlude while we see a three-year-old Lucy (played by Elle, Dakota's younger sister), we fast-forward several years until Lucy is 7, played by Dakota herself. We hear Lucy barrage her father with questions any normal, inquisitive child would ask their parents. Questions like, "Why does the snow flake?"; or "Why does the moon follow me home?"; or "Where does the hour go in daylight savings?" Sam answers Lucy's questions in a manner you might expect from someone with an I.Q. of 70. For example, when Lucy asks why men are bald, Sam answers, "Sometimes they're bald because their head is shiny and they don't have hair on it, so their head is just more of their face." Of course, Sam's logic is impeccable, but he can't quite sate Lucy's curiosity. (To be fair to Sam, I've observed "normal" parents respond to similar questions with answers arguably more inane than Sam's.)

Lucy becomes aware that she is quickly surpassing her father both intellectually and emotionally. In spite of the fact that Sam regularly behaves in ways that would make a typical kid's head explode in embarrassment, we see that Lucy is not ashamed of her father. Of course, when Sam makes a huge scene at Big Boy because he can't get French pancakes, Lucy is embarrassed, but she's not ashamed. Lucy is troubled by her development beyond her father to the point that she is afraid to learn and is deliberately stifling her own mental growth.

Sam is confronted with this fact by Lucy's teachers, and later, when Lucy pretends she can't read a particular word in a book because she knows her father can't, Sam calls her on it and demands that she reads it. "Are you calling me a liar?" she says, and quite forcefully refuses to read it. After some arguing, Lucy softly and sympathetically tells Sam, "I don't want to read it if you can't." This scene is powerful, and here is where I fully realized the genius of Dakota Fanning. There is a wisdom, maturity, and enigmatic force behind those captivating blue eyes. That kind of thing can't be acted. You either have it or you don't. Dakota has it.

The plot progresses when Sam, through no fault of his own, gets arrested for solicitation. An agent from the Department of Child and Family Services becomes aware of the fact that a mentally retarded man is the sole caretaker of a 7-year-old girl and intervenes. The court then detains Lucy pending a jurisdictional hearing, and she is placed in foster care.

Meanwhile, Sam must find a lawyer. One of the friends from his clique suggests, "You need a personal injury lawyer because you have been personally injured." Combing through the yellow pages, they seek out the "fastest talking four-named lawyer." Enter Rita Harrison, played by Michelle Pfeiffer (meow). Rita is tightly wound and highly strung, with a husband she hardly sees and a son for whom she never has time. Naturally she does everything she can to brush Sam off. But in a serendipitous turn of events, Rita attempts to save face in front of her peers and offers Sam her services pro bono.

The chaos that seems to cling to Rita is emphatic, and it is captured very well on film. The juxtaposition of Rita – the "normal" mother who in reality has a completely dysfunctional family – with Sam – the "unfit" father who has nurtured a compassionate and extremely intelligent daughter – makes a clear statement that challenges the notions of what our society considers acceptable parenting.

The courtroom scenes are nicely done, with editing and camera work that creates a steady mood of confusion, making you see the world through Sam's eyes. These scenes visually are cast with a tint of blue, giving the feeling of a cold, emotionally harsh atmosphere. The district attorney, played by Richard Schiff, is a soft spoken man who presents his arguments well. This movie tables some hard questions. Having become quite emotionally involved with both Sam and Lucy, I wanted to completely ignore the intellectual realities that a retarded man who can barely make a cup of coffee probably isn't fit to raise a daughter on his own. I wanted a happy ending, damnit.

I wanted to hate the district attorney. I wanted to hate Lucy's foster mother Randy (Laura Dern). I wanted everything to be black and white, with the good guys on an obvious good side, and the bad guys on an obvious bad side. But we get none of that. Randy is not the wicked, abusive foster parent. Instead she is immensely compassionate, clearly wanting only what's best for Lucy. She has come to love Lucy and wants to adopt her, but becomes torn as she realizes how much Sam and Lucy truly love each other.

I Am Sam is wonderfully shot with beautiful compositions. Some scenes make effective use of silhouettes, such as the night in the playground or when Lucy is separated from Sam. The scene where Rita coaches Sam at her home is a gorgeous piece of cinematography, using primary colors and hard shadows to construct a theme of Rita's cold, ruthless world versus Sam's simple and trusting one. Although I am not a fan of the Beatles, the soundtrack is largely comprised of contemporary renditions, including one from Sarah McLachlan, and I found I enjoyed the the music enough to have bought the soundtrack.

There's not one moment of bad acting in this movie. I was duly impressed with Sean Penn's performance, and was in fact rather surprised he didn't receive an Academy Award for it. Both Michelle Pfeiffer and Laura Dern had scenes in this movie that brought tears to my cheek.

But let's not fool ourselves as to who the real star of this movie is. Dakota upstages her bigger-named colleagues in every single scene without exception. Her portrayal of Lucy as a strong, mature, intelligent, and wise young girl comes naturally to her, and not just because Dakota is herself these things, but because she is a brilliant actress. If you saw this movie and didn't fall in love with Dakota, check your pulse.

This is Dakota's foray into mainstream film, and it remains, I would say, her best piece of work to date. Even so, there are no bad performances from Dakota, only substandard characters that don't let her flex her acting muscle. If you liked Dakota in I Am Sam, then I recommend seeing Taken and Man on Fire, because her roles in those films are comparable.

For her outstanding performance as Lucy in I Am Sam, Dakota earns a perfect score. No contest. No deliberation required. As for the film itself, at a score of 4.5 it ranks on my personal top 10 list.