My Left Foot

 2/4

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Alison Whelan

Rated R (probably for Language and Brief Violence)

"My Left Foot" feels like one of those movies designed to win Oscars and nothing else.  In fact, it did win two Oscars for the immortal Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker, but apart from their strong work, there's not much else to remember about this movie.  It's well-acted, but all in all it's pretty dull.

Christy Brown (Day-Lewis) is getting recognized for his work in order to raise money for the disabled.  Despite being a talented artist and writer, Christy is not the ideal candidate for the job.  He's an alcoholic jerk who makes no secret of his lust for women nor is he above using his disability to manipulate people into doing what he wants.  Interspersed with his attempts to seduce a woman tasked with looking after him while he awaits his entrance are vignettes from his childhood.  Most notably how his mother's love and refusal to give up on him allowed him to become more than a cripple.

Perhaps the best way to start talking about "My Left Foot" is to begin with its star.  Daniel Day-Lewis is famous for not only his range and ability but the intensity in which he buried himself in each role he played.  A method actor to the extreme, Day-Lewis insisted on remaining in character all throughout the shoot, even to the point of breaking two ribs from the physical ordeal.  Critics and audiences were impressed with the result, but the cast and crew of the film were not.  The actor forced others to wheel him around in a wheelchair and feed him, just like his character.  At one point his English agent was on location and grew so tired of the actor's antics that he left in frustration.

As obnoxious as this sounds, there's no denying that it was a success.  There's rarely a moment when we don't accept him as Christy Brown, warts and all.  He doesn't just embody the physical aspect of the man he is portraying, but he digs deep into Christy's personality which was brittle and sarcastic.  Not to mention hostile.  It's a tremendous acting job, and while it wasn't the actor's breakout role, it did earn him the first of three Best Actor Oscars, the others being "There Will Be Blood" and "Lincoln."

Brilliant as Daniel Day-Lewis is, he isn't the beating heart of the film.  That distinction goes to Brenda Fricker, whose love and faith in her son comes from within her soul.  It isn't easy to project that kind of emotion at all, let alone making it seem like it comes from genuinely inside the actor, but Fricker does that.  It's in her body language and her tone of voice as much as the dialogue.  Daniel Day-Lewis gets all the glory for this film, but in some ways Fricker's performance is more profound.

In many ways, "My Left Foot" isn't so much a biopic as it is a story of a family.  Christy comes from a large Irish Catholic family, and their insistence on not letting his disability define him or how he engages with the world is how he survives.  They include them in their games (he plays a soccer goalie and gets a kiss during "spin the bottle") and they never talk down to him.

The problem is that, for all the good performances and insights, director Jim Sheridan keeps them at an arm's distance.  There's no one to really identify with because none of them are sufficiently fleshed out.  Many biopics have difficulty with this when they cover a substantial period in time, and "My Left Foot" is one of them.  It's professionally made on a technical level, but did I really care about anyone in it?  No, I didn't.