I Am David: A Parable of Trust

That it's hard to know whom to trust is true, even for those of us who've lived normal lives.

But Anne Holm's David, from the novel "I Am David" which I read as a kid under the title of "North to Freedom," did not live a normal life. He grew up in a camp -- what kind of camp is never made clear in the book. But he's a boy who only knew kindness from few, some of it disguised so he did not know what it was.

This morning, I'm watching Paul Feig's 2004 telling of the tale. And while I've got some quibbles with the screenplay (Fieg, it appears, messed with the character of Johannes from the book, placed the story more firmly in a Cold War setting, and reduced the religious element from David praying constantly to "the God of the green pastures and the still waters" to a moment with a saint recommended by a baker the boy encounters) the story is a good story on trust, maybe Trust with the big T.

If we grow up not knowing whom to trust, the world is a terrible place. David learns that the world outside of the camp may not be perfect, but trusting others and letting them trust you is the only way to make life bearable.

And David, like the rest of us, needs to learn that one bad deed does not a bad person make -- though it's easy to understand why he distrusts, considering the place he grew up in.

He has the following conversation with Maria, a girl he saves from a fire shortly after her brother Carlo beats him up just for the fun of it:

Do you like your brother Carlo?

Oh yes. But he makes fun of me a lot. He calls me crybaby. But I don't cry as much as I used to. Do you like him?

There's a lot of people I don't like.

Why not?

Because the world is filled with terrible people, Maria. And they all do terrible, evil things. I've seen them.

You don't think that we are terrible people, do you?

No, not at all.

Not even Carlo?

And David doesn't answer.

The movie takes more liberties with the story than it should, inserting stuff that's not needed, skipping over stuff that was central to Holm's story.

But in changing the tale, maybe Feig does us a service by bringing different elements into the story to show us that even in our modern world, we should learn to trust despite the terrible people we've encountered, because we're not perfect ourselves. Trusting ourselves despite our own shortcomings might be the first step to take in trusting others.

UPDATE: Yuck. Though this is a parable of trust, Feig shouldn't have been trusted with this story. Spoiler for those who read the book: David gets as far as Switzerland, and then is flown to Denmark. I know Holm spends most of her narrative time in Italy and Switzerland, but she doesn't fly him there. I think this ending cheapens the story.