'I Am' offers personal life perspective

Sometimes, it’s important to shake things up a bit.

Director Tom Shadyac’s new documentary, “I Am,” offers plenty of food for thought about the true nature of happiness and what people can do to bring about positive changes in their own lives and the world around them.

Change can be a scary subject on the best of days, but Shadyac realized that approaching big mindset shifts from a personal level can make solving large-scale problems seem more manageable.

“I noticed that a lot of documentaries are negative and pointed the finger out,” Shadyac said. “I wanted to look at myself and point the finger in.”

The Falls Church native and University of Virginia graduate will be on hand for a screening of “I Am” at 2 p.m. Saturday in UVa’s Newcomb Hall Theater and a discussion afterward, all as part of his first Virginia Film Festival appearance.

Since graduating from UVa, Shadyac has had a busy career making “Bruce Almighty,” “Evan Almighty,” “Liar Liar,” “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and other films. Along the way, he’d built the kind of successful life others admire. But his world was about to get shaken.

After a serious mountain bike accident three years ago, Shadyac came away with more than broken bones. He’d had yet another significant concussion.

“I hit my head a lot, which might explain some of my movies,” Shadyac said with a chuckle. “I guess my first concussion was in high school playing basketball — and fell and bounced my head off the floor.”

Thanks to an active life of snowboarding, bicycling and other sports, “I’ve been knocked in the noggin a number of times,” he said.

But this time was different. After the accident, Shadyac developed post-concussion syndrome, a complex condition that can bring a frustrating storm of physical and emotional symptoms that’s different for each patient. As he healed, he found himself re-evaluating his life and taking a fresh look at what truly mattered to him.

“The concussion simply sparked the telling of the story,” Shadyac said. “I wanted to start a conversation about two questions: What is wrong with our world, and what would it take to fix it? I wanted to get to the root of those problems. In our society, we’ve been treating the symptoms.

“It led me on a really positive journey.”

His new film offers audience members a chance to take a closer look around — and inside — and see if anything else needs to be shaken up.

“If we believe we are violent, competitive, aggressive in our natures, we create societies that way,” Shadyac said. “We have a model that you have to compete with your neighbors. But I see this incredible power when we cooperate.

“Learning often involves unlearning. We as a society have to examine what we’ve been taught.”

“I Am” isn’t a story about a concussion, then, but about ideas that can have repercussions.

“Without a concussion, I wouldn’t have made this film,” he said, calling the finished product “the beginning of a conversation that we were not having.”

Perhaps some of the answers to the big questions are simpler than they seem.

Thought-provoking big ideas, to be sure. But don’t think for a minute that the director of “Evan Almighty,” a comedy about a congressman who builds an ark, would approach the subject in a dry fashion.

“It’s very entertaining,” Shadyac said of his documentary. “It’s got a lot of humor. It’s positive. It’s uplifting.”

You’ll want to allow plenty of time for sticking around after “I Am” ends for the discussion.

“We have great conversations afterward,” Shadyac said, adding that he relishes hearing the differing viewpoints audience members share as they dive into the issues raised by the film. “I welcome the ‘wait a minutes’ as well as the choir. I want to hear all of it.

“We have conversations that are inspiring. We’re very hopeful that the audiences have been leaving very empowered.”