My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
Directed by Jim Sheridan
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
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What critics compared My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown to
It’s wrenching to watch and recalls elements of Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar-winning performance in “My Left Foot.”
All this makes the performance of the youthful, freckled Redmayne, at 32 playing his first lead in a movie, so exciting, and reminiscent of another British actor's memorable performance at the same age — Daniel Day-Lewis, in "My Left Foot."
Still, what’s onscreen is less a cerebral experience than a stirring and bittersweet love story, inflected with tasteful good humor, that can’t help but recall earlier disability dramas like “My Left Foot” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
Eddie Redmayne's captivating performance will be compared to Daniel Day Lewis's achievement in "My Left Foot," but it is important to note how much life, joy and humor he brings to the role with little more than a cocked eyebrow, a few facial muscles and his eyes (a scene where he gets his head caught in a sweater when Jane leaves the room is delightfully relatable).
It recalls Daniel Day Lewis' in My Left Foot — minus the rage.
Comparisons to Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning work in "My Left Foot" are inevitable — and not undeserved.
When we talk about great accomplishments in acting, the conversation usually turns to feats of physical transformation or wrenching psychological deep dives — your Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot , your Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice .
Eddie Redmayne’s performance is astonishing, as eloquent, though in a different way, as Daniel Day-Lewis’s work in “My Left Foot.”
Like some stars before him — Daniel Day-Lewis in “My Left Foot,” Ian McKellen in “Richard III” — he has created not the mere study of an infirmity but the drama of a man trapped inside one, fighting ferociously to emerge.
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It’s based on the real Father Stuart Long, with the standard theatrical embellishments (and concepts of suffering to test faith), but none are significant enough to give this picture the profound flavor of “The Song of Bernadette,” or “The Robe,” or “A Man for All Seasons” (or even “My Left Foot” or “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” a la the biblical Book of Job).
In one scene, ripped off from My Left Foot (1989), Max gets drunk in the course of a celebratory dinner and insults the teacher's date: "I have a hit play.
It’s an extraordinarily subtle and poignant turn that enriches Cumberbatch’s own performance, the way Hugh O’Conor did for Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot, or Noah Taylor for Geoffrey Rush in Shine.
The film just snatched away the best film, best director, best cinematography and best screenplay Oscars and brought huge smiles to the faces of the filmmakers, and even a smile for lead actor Michael Keaton -- who did not receive an Oscar for best actor, since Eddie Redmayne's performance as Stephen Hawking appropriately fulfilled the Academy's quota for disabled geniuses (i.e., Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” Daniel Day Lewis in “My Left Foot”).
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He gets to know a curmudgeonly oldster (Brenda Fricker, from My Left Foot, as a pigeon-loving bag lady) and melts her heart just in time for the toasty, spirit-of-Christmas finale.
Jim Broadbent (The Crying Game) and the great Fiona Shaw (My Left Foot) make appearances as corrupt henchmen named Mother—that's him—and Father—that's her.