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 ***
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