Cinema Tuesdays Review

Left Out — a Clean Transfer
By Nathan Cone

Over fifteen years ago, the acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis rose to prominence with his Oscar-winning portrayal of Christy Brown in the film “My Left Foot.” The movie, based on Brown’s own life story, is a triumph of performance, from Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker as Christy’s mother. But sadly, the new “Collector’s Series” DVD of this award-winning film leaves a little to be desired in its current home video incarnation.

Christy Brown was born in Dublin, Ireland, with cerebral palsy at a time when those similarly afflicted were usually placed in homes or asylums so they could be looked after. But Brown stayed home with his parents and oodles of siblings (twenty-one in all), and learned to write, paint and get by with his one controllable extremity, his left foot. Brown’s story is quite remarkable; the film only hints at the fact that he was a published poet as well as a painter.

Day-Lewis gives one heck of a performance, inhabiting Christy Brown so completely that one forgets the man isn’t in a wheelchair himself. He also manages to elicit heaps of emotion from the audience using his face and eyes, despite his necessarily screwed visage. “My Left Foot” rests almost solely on his shoulders, and he carries the picture well.

In the years since the film’s release, we’ve grown accustomed to underdog stories like this one, and so “My Left Foot” in some ways isn’t as fresh of a film as it is when first released. A few times, I was able to guess a plot point before it even happened. SPOILER ALERT! Example: If, after over 40 minutes have elapsed, Mum says to Christy “That’s the closest [Dad] will ever get to saying ‘I Love You’,” you can bet Dad will be dead in the next scene. END SPOILER

The DVD of “My Left Foot” includes two short featurettes. One documents the real-life Christy Brown and shows some archive footage of him at work on a painting. The other short featurette is about the making of the film. Although it is scarcely over 10 minutes long, the short featurette goes beyond the standard “Electronic Press Kit” interviews that accompany most DVDs. Those EPKs usually feature the director and actors talking about how great it was to work on the film, but this one actually charts the journey of the film from page to screen succinctly and informatively. Still, two featurettes and a stills gallery hardly make this DVD a “Collector’s Series” disc as is trumpeted on the front cover.

The biggest downside to this presentation of “My Left Foot” on DVD is unfortunately the video presentation. Although this movie is only sixteen years old, the print used to create this DVD is dirty, and noticeably so. Not two minutes into the film I paused the image to count the dirt flecks that appear on screen constantly.

One more thing: take a look at the cover of this DVD above, specifically at Daniel Day-Lewis. I guess the marketing geniuses at Buena Vista figured a bearded, palsied Daniel Day-Lewis wouldn’t sell this disc on store shelves, because in the movie he doesn’t look anything like the image on the disc’s cover!

“My Left Foot” is an inspiring, if no longer novel, film, and it’s a valuable story for young teens to see, if it may help eliminate some of the stigma associated with mental problems that manifest themselves physically, which can be scary to some. The film is rated R, but it’s only for language. It’s recommended viewing, certainly, but it’ll take another try for the DVD to live up to the “Collector’s Series” tag.

8/20/05

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