Director: Jim Sheridan
Writers: Shane Connaughton,
Jim Sheridan, Christy Brown (book)
Starring: Daniel Day Lewis,
Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Ruth McCabe, Alison Whelan, Cyril
Cusack
I have a special needs
child. She has developmental delays. She’ll catch up. That’s what we say, and
we believe it. Not that we don’t think she’ll need some help, but those
developmental delays can be tricky. It would be easy to think she just doesn’t
get it, that she doesn’t understand. I think often she acts like she doesn’t
understand when she does, but it’s very hard to tell what’s going on in that
head of hers.
Christy Brown didn’t pretend
not to understand. His severely crippling cerebral palsy had many believing he
was a lost cause. His mother never did, but imagine how difficult it must’ve
been to convince people that there was just as much going on inside your noggin’
with only your left foot with which to do it. The thing about that type of developmental
handicap is that it’s so hard for anyone else to imagine that so much is going
on inside. It’s like living life in a see-through coffin.
“My Left Foot” is the
Oscar-winning movie by Jim Sheridan that celebrates the life of Christy Brown
in the way that any such life should be celebrated. Not as a sad look at the
harsh realities of life, but as a life lived to the fullest. It’s not a
redefinition of ‘living’, but a redefinition of ‘fullest’. No, scratch that.
There’s no redefinition necessary. It means the same to Brown as it does to
anybody, whether the rest of us can see it or not.
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