era@ncar.ucar.edu (Ed Arnold) (01/13/90)
MY LEFT FOOT
A film review by Ed Arnold
Copyright 1990 Ed Arnold
(I recently posted a recommendation for the movie MY LEFT FOOT in
misc.handicap, and received an inquiry from someone on the net who was
perplexed about the cryptic newspaper ads for the movie and the lack of
explanation about the movie's subject in my posting. For those who want to
know a little more about the content of the movie before plopping down their
money, here's the message I sent in reply.)
Christy Brown was born in 1932 in Dublin, Ireland. As you might guess,
prenatal and delivery care was lousy for the kids of poor families at that
time, and there obviously weren't any electronic monitors. In fact, prenatal
care is still lousy for most poor people in Ireland, as shown by their rather
high incidence of cerebral palsy. (In the case of Christy's family, his mother
was pregnant 22 times, but only 13 of the children survived.)
Anyway, Christy was probably asphyxiated almost to the point of death
during labor & delivery, but survived. He survived in a state in which his
mind was fully functional, but he had very little use of his body; only his
left foot functioned well enough to allow him any significant control over his
environment, thus the title. Medically, he would probably be termed a
triplegic.
With the use of his left foot, he eventually became a very good painter
and wrote some books, among them MY LEFT FOOT.
(There has been another famous writer from Ireland recently, who also has
CP. Christopher Nolan, who writes with a headstick, wrote a book a couple
years back entitled UNDER THE EYE OF THE CLOCK, which was widely acclaimed.)
There is nothing glitzy about MY LEFT FOOT, but the emotional images are
stunning. Here are some of them. DON'T READ THESE BULLETED ITEMS IF YOU ARE
GOING TO GO SEE THE MOVIE AND WANT TO BE SURPRISED:
o As a child, he is called a "half-wit" by people who don't understand
that he has a bright mind in a disabled body. The facial expression
which the child actor was able to reproduce was remarkably accurate:
a look of pain, accompanied by a downturned mouth/pouting look often
seen in children with certain types of CP.
o As a child, he finally makes it known to his parents that a lot is
happening in his mind, by scratching out the word "MOTHER" on the floor
with chalk held in his left foot.
o As an adult, he is in love with the female doctor who was responsible
for much of his rehabilitation, but is rejected by her. The obvious
pain he feels as he tells her that he's tired of platonic love (the
phrase used in the movie is "f**k Plato"), that he's tired of
being denied the expression and pleasure of his sexuality simply
because his twisted body doesn't work like the average person's, is
a real choker.
I doubt that this would be a great movie for everyone. I suspect there
are some people from the "Feeling Good" School of Life who would resent the
subject material. Fact of the matter is, I'm biased for reasons I don't need
to go into here; taking that into account, I'll simply say that MY LEFT FOOT
is the best movie I've seen in 6 years. As I've said before, it puts the glitz
of RAINMAN to shame.
Ed Arnold * era@ncar.ucar.edu * era@ncario [bitnet] * ...!ncar!era [uucp]leeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (02/13/90)
MY LEFT FOOT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Upbeat but not saccharine tale of
Christy Brown. Paralyzed with cerebral palsy so that he has
control only over one foot, he becomes an artist and an
author. The film perhaps over-emphasizes his romantic life
over other aspects that could be more interesting, but it is
a superb performance. Rating: +2.
Christy Brown was born with cerebral palsy to a poor Dublin family.
Paralyzed so that he has control only over one foot, he used that foot to
write and paint, distinguishing himself in both until his death in 1981.
This is his story from birth to his late thirties, told as a series of
flashbacks as he thinks about his life one afternoon. This is not just his
biography, but also a portrait of living conditions for the poor in Dublin
in the 1930s and 1940s. We see not just his life but also his times. His
father was a heavy drinker and a bully. Some of the early scenes of Brown
as a child trapped in this household and in a body he cannot operate have a
nightmarish quality most fictional horror films cannot approach. We cower
with a terrified Christy when his father goes on drunken rampages. People
call him an idiot to his face and he has no way to respond or prove them
wrong. We struggle with Christy the first time he tries to communicate,
scratching on the floor with a piece of chalk between his toes, answering an
arithmetic problem that his father had missed a few minutes before. Like
many people with communications disabilities, he is assumed to be profoundly
retarded when in fact he has a very quick mind.
This sort of film could easily have become sentimental inspirational
muck. In fact, it has more of the feel of Daniel Keyes's FLOWERS FOR
ALGERNON. As Christy raises himself, his world perspective changes. At
times he is not very likable and often he is manipulative. Where the story
falls short of FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON is that it lacks the drama of the fall
or that book's awe at intellectual achievement. And like the aborted stage
version of FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, the peak of Christy Brown's achievement is
that he "gets the girl," nothing more profound. In spite of the film's
apparent emphasis on the importance of Christy's love life, it is one of the
better portraits of the life of the handicapped on film.
Daniel Day Lewis is good as the adult Christy, as has been noted by
other reviewers. I have seen little credit given, however, to what I
consider even better performances by Ray McAnally as Christy's swaggering,
ruffian father and especially by Hugh O'Conor as the young Christy. At age
13, O'Conor turns in the best performance in a well-acted film. The
screenplay was written by Shane Cunningham and the director, Jim Sheridan.
My rating is a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.comlmann@jjmhome.UUCP (Laurie Mann) (03/03/90)
MY LEFT FOOT
A film review by Laurie Mann
Copyright 1990 Laurie Mann
Just who *is* Daniel Day Lewis anyway? He's gone off and lost himself in
yet another superbly-acted role.
MY LEFT FOOT is the story of Christy Brown, a person so crippled by
cerebral palsy that most people thought he was retarded until he was around
ten. It is the story of how Christy struggles to communicate with the rest of
the world. The movie is astonishingly good, with strong performances by the
entire cast, but particularly Daniel Day Lewis as Christy, Brenda Fricker as
Mother, and Hugh O'Connel (?) as young Christy.
The story is told in flashbacks, and it's handled very well. Christy,
who's written MY LEFT FOOT and has already received national acclaim as a
artist, is invited to a lengthy benefit at a manor in Britain. Since he does
not like to appear in public, he spends most of the benefit in a side room in
the company of a nurse. The nurse reads his book, so Christy's story unfolds
as she reads.
The details about living in a poor neighborhood in Dublin abound in most
of the movie. The Browns have too many children, live in too small a house,
and are well-meaning but uneducated people. Mother believes that Christy is
intelligent, and talks to him all the time, even though he can't respond.
Father is convinced he's an idiot, but loves him just the same. His many
brothers and sisters accept him as much as they can.
There's a wonderful scene early in the picture when Mother falls down the
stairs after having brought Christy upstairs. He hears her fall, and hears her
silence. He throws himself off the bed, scampers down the stairs, crawls over
his mother, and makes an enormous racket by pounding on the door with his foot.
When the neighbors respond to the noise and take Christy's mother to the
hospital, they assume she'd fallen with Christy in her arms---they cannot
conceive that he literally saved his mother's life.
As his family gradually learns that he *is* intelligent, they build him a
cart and take him outside. But Christy never does fit in outside. So, as he
gets older, he becomes more reclusive.
The older Christy is shown struggling to communicate and to be accepted.
He has all the usual needs of a young man, but almost no one believes it. When
he learns that the woman he's *very* interested in is about to marry, he
becomes furious. The scene of his fury is painful to watch, because how can
you express fury if you can't yell or pound your fists or chew the scenery
(though Lewis comes close...)? This scene is particularly hard to watch, but
it is extremely well-constructed.
The movie has one minor failing---it often ignores the hordes of little
children who populated the house most of the time. Mother seems to be able to
devote an enormous amount of time to Christy, despite the fact that he was one
of about ten children. Christy seems to be in the one children's bedroom by
himself quite a lot. Eventually, his father and brothers build him his own
room off the kitchen, but it would have made more sense to show Christy trying
to paint with all his brothers and sisters around.
The movie progresses slowly, but I was never bored. In fact, I think it
should have lasted about another ten minutes or so (how's that for "purient
interest"?). It was rated R, but that was probably just for bad language.
Anyway, I think this is a 9 on the Chuck scale. The Critics' Consensus, a
national consensus of 40 leading movie critics, rates this movie as a 9.4, the
highest average on the list. ROGER AND ME rated a 9.3, and DRIVING MISS DAISY,
a 9. By contrast, TANGO AND CASH, SKI PATROL, and LOOSE CANNONS each ranked
under 3.
*** Laurie Mann ** harvard!m2c!jjmhome!lmann ** lmann%jjmhome@m2c.m2c.org ***