How he does this, and at what cost, provides ''My Left Foot'' with its narrative shape. He has long since moved beyond the longings, expressed by the protagonists in ''Mask'' and ''The Elephant Man,'' to be like other people.Ĭhristy knows he will always be different, but that doesn't prevent him from attempting to realize himself as completely as other men. Day-Lewis's work in ''My Left Foot'' to be appreciated.Īt first he is so explicitly deformed that it seems rude to stare at him, which might be just the sort of reaction that Christy would use to gain an advantage over a stranger.
Thus it takes a while for the full measure of Mr. Technical facility can go a long way toward the creation of what appears to be a performance. It's never easy judging the work of actors in such singular and grotesque circumstances. That, however, would have been a different movie from the one that Jim Sheridan has directed from a screenplay written by him and Shane Connaughton, with the exemplary Daniel Day-Lewis playing the adult Christy Brown and Hugh O'Conor playing Christy as a boy.
''My Left Foot'' might have been even better if it had been even more caustic. ''My Left Foot'' is an intelligent, beautifully acted adaptation of Christy Brown's first book, published in 1955, the initial chapter in a series of semi-autobiographical works in which he recalled his own most particular coming of age.
His mind was fertile, restless, questing and, it seems, surprisingly romantic. Through the uninhibited, unself-conscious love of his family, and the patience of his doctors, Christy learned how to be understood when he talked and to express himself first as a painter and then as a writer. People who had no idea they were being cruel referred to him within his hearing as an ''idiot'' and a ''half-wit.''
With his lips pulled over to one side, his eyes wobbling upward in their sockets, he spoke in a series of guttural syllables that would be translated by his mother.īecause he had the use of only his left foot, he was able to get around with difficulty, sometimes in a homemade wooden pramlike vehicle, pulled by his pals, and later in a wheelchair. He was unable to communicate through recognizable speech. The film opens today at Lincoln Plaza 1, Broadway at 63d Street.īorn in 1932 with cerebral palsy, the ninth of the 22 children his parents would eventually have (13 survived), Christy Brown grew up as an archetypal member of Dublin's working class - painfully poor, often deprived of essentials, yet also miraculously resilient.Ĭhristy's body was both twisted and paralyzed. Following are excerpts from Vincent Canby's review, which appeared in The New York Times on Sept. ''My Left Foot'' was shown as part of the recent New York Film Festival.
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