MY LEFT FOOT (1989)

Country: Ireland

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Jim Sheridan

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis / Brenda Fricker / Alison Whelan

Plot

The true story of writer and painter Christy Brown and his struggle to live a life of importance despite being afflicted with cerebral palsy.

What I Liked

The performances of Hugh O’Conor and Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of Christy Brown at different stages of his life must both rank among the greatest physical performances in motion pictures.  Both actors are impressively convincing in their portrayal of Brown’s affliction and also manage to flesh out his persona as a sensitive, intelligent, and difficult person.

 Outside of the issue of cerebral palsy and the tremendous burden it brings to Brown and his family, the film deals primarily with everyday Dubliners in everyday situations just getting through their lives.  However, the film is rarely if ever boring.  The characters involved are interesting, their relationships moving, and their conflicts believable.  Those lives and Dublin itself are treated with great respect by the filmmakers, giving you the impression that, for all his hardships growing up, Brown deeply loved Dublin and its people.  While Brown’s early years are imbued with the same nostalgic sentimentality many people have for childhood, the film manages to avoid the many possible clichés and never loses sight of the story in favor of meaningless reminiscence.

Well-written and superbly acted, “My Left Foot” is heartbreaking and inspiring, unique and familiar, funny and tragic.  It’s a wonderful tale about life and one man who had it a great deal rougher than most of us do.  It’s as simple and as big as that.

What I Didn’t Like

For what it is, “My Left Foot” is flawless.  Daily life for Christy Brown is adeptly displayed in all its horror, hardship, humor, and beauty.  Still, some who watch it might find it to lack the feel-good, easily inspiring closing they’d hoped for.  Others may find Brown an ungrateful, selfish drunk and therefore impossible to root for.  I don’t this film was made for those people.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

There is a particularly hard to watch moment in the film where Brown realizes the woman he has been in love with for years has never loved him romantically and is in fact engaged to another man.  The moment turns into a horrible experience for all involved as Brown becomes so emotionally distraught that no one, not even he, knows how to stop him from harming himself.  Watching this is a profoundly disconcerting experience for all of the characters and the film audience as well, but it is also masterfully rendered by the actors and the filmmakers to full effect.  This scene more than any other is proof that the filmmakers weren’t concerned about sugar coating Brown or his life, but showing the true difficulties involved in a situation for which there is no perfect solution.

My Rating: 5 out of 5