I've just returned from a showing of "My Left Foot" at the public library. What an emotional experience -- I feel drained and uplifted.
It's the story of Christy Brown, Irish writer and painter, and based on the author's autobiography, "My Left Foot." Christy was born with a form of cerebral palsey such that the only limb he had good control of was his left foot. Doctors advised his parents he was hoplelessly mentally retarded but his mother didn't give up on him, and somewhat as Annie Sullivan did with Helen Keller, helped him achieve a breakthrough in which he learned the alphabet and then to read, write, and paint.
This film won Academy Awards for Daniel Day-Lewis (best actor) and for another cast mbr as best supporting actress (as his mother); it was also nominated for best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.
While many films may entertain me, many also often leave me having to overlook gross fictions or improbabilities in realistic psychological reactions.
Not this film -- it was absolutely "spot on" in portraying typical Irish family roles (see, for example, Irish families in McGoldrick's "Ethnicity & Family Therapy") as well Christy Brown's uneven maturation -- some immature personality reactions as well as flavored by a picking up of some of his father's less than stellar reactions.
The film presents the greater truth while changing certain sequences, condensing several important people into one person, for the sake of telling a coherent, believable story, not burdened by small, less important actualities.
The performance by Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest, believable acting jobs I've ever seen. Truly magnificent, outstanding, superlative.
"My Left Foot" has more than some similarity to the much later film, "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly," in that each portrays the real life of a person surmounting the imprisonment and isolation of a severe physical handicap and achieving success.
And it resonates with William Enest Henley's "Invictus" which begins:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul."
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It's the story of Christy Brown, Irish writer and painter, and based on the author's autobiography, "My Left Foot." Christy was born with a form of cerebral palsey such that the only limb he had good control of was his left foot. Doctors advised his parents he was hoplelessly mentally retarded but his mother didn't give up on him, and somewhat as Annie Sullivan did with Helen Keller, helped him achieve a breakthrough in which he learned the alphabet and then to read, write, and paint.
This film won Academy Awards for Daniel Day-Lewis (best actor) and for another cast mbr as best supporting actress (as his mother); it was also nominated for best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.
While many films may entertain me, many also often leave me having to overlook gross fictions or improbabilities in realistic psychological reactions.
Not this film -- it was absolutely "spot on" in portraying typical Irish family roles (see, for example, Irish families in McGoldrick's "Ethnicity & Family Therapy") as well Christy Brown's uneven maturation -- some immature personality reactions as well as flavored by a picking up of some of his father's less than stellar reactions.
The film presents the greater truth while changing certain sequences, condensing several important people into one person, for the sake of telling a coherent, believable story, not burdened by small, less important actualities.
The performance by Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest, believable acting jobs I've ever seen. Truly magnificent, outstanding, superlative.
"My Left Foot" has more than some similarity to the much later film, "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly," in that each portrays the real life of a person surmounting the imprisonment and isolation of a severe physical handicap and achieving success.
And it resonates with William Enest Henley's "Invictus" which begins:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul."
