My Left Foot (1989)

Review:

The film that launched the career of Daniel Day Lewis, one of today’s greatest living actors, is a small movie with a very big performance at its core. “My Left Foot” is the biopic of Christy Brown, famed Irish painter and writer who was born with severe cerebral palsy. The only part of his body that Christy Brown had any control over was his left foot and with that left foot he painted haunting portraits and typed his life story. It is an impressive life story, made all the more impressive by how improbable it is.

Christy Brown was born in the slums of Dublin to a large, poor family. Instead of being sent away to a home or becoming a horrible burden to his family, Christy was integrated into his family’s life. In “My Left Foot” these scenes are depicted with much warmth and good humor. As a child Christy was carried up and down stairs by his parents, neighborhood children wheeled him around in a makeshift cart, and in his teenage years he even became an effective goalie for street soccer games.

In one excellent scene, the young Christy picks up a piece of chalk with his left foot and scribbles out the word ‘mother’ on the floor. His whole family is shocked to learn that Christy is an intelligent being, capable of learning and expression. Brenda Fricker plays Christy’s mother with the heartiness and warmth of a mother who loves unconditionally. Perhaps she is the only one who doesn’t seem surprised by Christy’s talents. She knew all along that Christy was more than just a crippled child.

In his later years, a compassionate doctor, Eileen Cole (Fiona Shaw), gives Christy speech therapy and physical therapy. Eileen is instrumental in arranging for Christy’s first art exhibit and his subsequent fame. She also instills in Christy a great love, one that she can’t quite return.

The most significant aspect of “My Left Foot” is Daniel Day Lewis’s performance as Christy. He is completely convincing as a man with cerebral palsy. The performance is in fact so consuming that little else in the film resonates with the same power. There are other great performances in this movie and wonderful little details, but they all seem to fade into the background. It is my theory that if you removed Day Lewis’s performance you’d see that this is a well balanced, even flowing, good film on the whole.

Day Lewis’s performance is so good it’s almost too good. It is the centerpiece of the film but it distracts from everything good that’s in its orbit.

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca this film is a “Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003).

Rationalization:

Just because the success of these films is predicated on the merits of one performance within the film. And also because if you look beyond those performances you can see a perfectly good movie that doesn’t get as much credit as that one performance in it. With “My Left Foot” I loved the performances of Brenda Fricker, Fiona Shaw, and Ray McAnally (as Christy’s father). These performances are part and parcel of Day Lewis’s great success. Sometimes one role in a movie can be like a black hole for everything else in the movie and its just not fair.