My Left Foot movie review & film summary (1990)
The story of Christy Brown is one of the great stories of human courage and determination. He belongs on the same list with Helen Keller, and yet it is hard to imagine Christy being good company for the saintly Miss Keller, since he was not a saint himself but a ribald, boozing, wickedly gifted Irishman who simply happened to be handicapped.
Jim Sheridan's "My Left Foot" is the story of Christy's life, based on his autobiography and on the memories of those who knew him.
He was not an easy man to forget. Tiny and twisted, bearded and unkempt, he managed, despite his late start, to grow into a poet, a novelist, a painter and a lyrical chronicler of his own life. Like many geniuses, he was not an easy man to live with, and the movie makes that clear in its brilliant opening scene.
Perhaps concerned that we will mistake "My Left Foot" for one of those pious TV docudramas, the movie begins in the middle of one of Christy's typical manipulations. He is backstage in the library of a great British country home where he is soon to be brought out to be given an award. He has a pint of whiskey hidden in his jacket pocket, with a straw to allow him to sip it. But a hired nurse is watching him with a gimlet eye. Trying to get her out of the way for a second, he asks her for a light for his cigarette.
"But Mr. Brown," she says, "you know that smoking is not good for you." "I didn't ask for a f - - - - - - psychological lecture," he replies. "I only asked for a f - - - - - - light." It is the perfect opening scene, because it breaks the ice. We know that it is all right to laugh with Christy, and not to be intimidated by the great burden of his life. And as the movie develops, it is startling how much of it plays as comedy - startling, unless we remember the universal Irish trait of black humor, in which the best laughter, the wicked laughter, is born out of hard times and bad luck.
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