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Move Review: My Left Foot

Christy Brown was an Irish writer with cerebral palsy. He was born in Dublin in
1932 and died in 1981. My Left Foot is based on Browns autobiography by the same
name. Nine works of Browns have been published, a number of them bestsellers and all
of them written using just his foot.
As an adolescent, the film portrays Christy struggling to express the vibrancy of
his inner life without any of the tools for communicating that people generally take for
granted. The younger Christy, played by Hugh OConner, cannot control his jaws,
tongue, and breathing well enough to speak. He has little to no control over the function
of his arms or his right leg, all of which have atrophied and drawn up from lack of use.
Early on, the film focuses heavily on Christys attempts to manage the involuntary
maneuvers of his body without the benefit of a wheelchair, which the family cannot
afford. The physicality of OConners portrayal of the spasms, twitches and rolls caused
by cerebral palsy is impressive, and Sheridans direction lingers on the younger Christys
attempts to somehow use his body to communicate that he is in fact listening, learning,
and thinking, though so many.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Christy from about 15 years on, and captures the
restrictions and clipped motions of cerebral palsy with methodical accuracy. As Christy
learns to speak, he must struggle for each word. As he learns to write and paint with his
left foot, he reveals new dimensions of personalityboldness, creativity, points of view,
ambition. Brown eventually receives personal therapy, which greatly improves his
speech. His therapist is also a genuine (and well-connected) advocate of his artwork, and
she helps his paintings reach the public. The public figure that Christy Brown becomes

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by the end of the film develops into a charming but volatile man with a dependence on
alcohol. The film does not explicitly frame this as a result of or response to his cerebral
palsy, and seems to suggest that this may be the genetic echo of Christys father at work.

Depiction, Personal Response, and Audience Understanding

Because the film is based on autobiography, we are getting an authentic vision of
life with cerebral palsy. The portrayal itself works hard not be either positive or negative,
but neutral. Sheridan tries to tell Christys story as he told it. Of course narrative makes
certain demands that render the life we see more dramatically and coherently than anyone
lives a life, but thats essential to filmmaking. Between Sheridans attempt at
transparency in his adaptation and the actors studied portrayals (especially Day-Lewis),
its hard not to feel that the audience comes away educated about cerebral palsy. This is
achieved through the development of the characters and society surrounding Christy, and
the drama that results form Christys interactions with that world.
There is a scene forty minutes or so into My Left Foot where an early teenage
Christy Brown writes his first word. The whole family is therehis mom, his dad, and an
ever-increasing collection of siblings. He takes the chalk in his unsteady left foot and
scrawls slowly on the thin wooden floor of his familys Irish flat, his face pinched in
concentration and beaded with sweat: MOTHER. Christys father Paddy, who until this
point has interpreted Christys muteness as stupidity, can hardly manage his joy, and
throws the boy over his shoulders for his first trip to the local pub. There he yells to all
the regulars inside, This is my son! Christy Brown, Genius!

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Before that point, his fathers perception of Christy mirrored the community at
large: an innocent boy whose disability leaves him forever underdeveloped. The scene
carries the triumphant dramatic tension of a boy finding his voice, but also the terrible
sadness in Paddys relief that his son is no longer shameful to the family.
The film portrays the other members of Christys family, his mother especially, as
fiercely protective of and devoted to Christy. He participates in all kinds of games with
the siblings and their friends, and over time this inclusion normalizes his disability in the
eyes of the community, at least in part. The film does show that prejudice and
misunderstanding lingers in the minds of his peers, especially when it comes to one of the
things that make us feel most human: romantic love. And Christy is not immune to
prejudice either. Invited to a therapy clinic for young people with cerebral palsy, Christy
balks at finding himself lumped in with other disabled children and eventually has to take
his sessions privately at home. Ultimately, the film manages to depict the complexity of
perceptions toward cerebral palsy in midcentury Ireland. We in the audience are always
so close to Christys point of view that we experience the world learning to understand
the nature of his disability from his own perspective. I was impressed by so much of
Sheridans care with his subject matter, but most impressed by the films ability to
convey that the public understands disability only to the extent that we are willing to pay
attention to the voices of those with disabilities and those others whove devoted
themselves to shaking us out of our easy, casual prejudice and into real empathy.

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Insights for Education

The life of Christy Brown throws into relief that a societys job ought to be to
help lower the barriers that a persons disability puts in place of their goals, rather than
creating more barriers for them. This requires deep empathy. This requires the kind of
empathy that allows those of us without disabilities to finally see what weve taken for
granted, what we still fail to address. This film also shows me that, given an opportunity
to express themselves, people with disabilities can guide our empathy in the most
effective directions. We have to understand their perceptions of the world in order to
modify ours.
As far as classroom instruction is concerned, my overarching insight is to
maintain awareness and empathy. As banal as that seems, these are two qualities that take
constant work, and because of that we too often choose to run on autopilot, which is
directed by prejudice and ideology. Pay attention to what people with dsabilities are
telling and showing you; pay attention to what those in society who devote their lives to
helping these folks are trying to teach us.