My Left Foot tells the story of the Dublin artist and writer Christy Brown, played by Daniel Day Lewis, who was born with cerebral palsy and who could only completely control his left foot. Christy grew up in a large working class family (Christy’s mother Bridget, played by the wonderful Brenda Fricker seems perpetually pregnant in the film). Sheridan gives us an excellent child’s eye view of the goings on the house from Christy’s perspective when he was a kid (played superbly by Hugh O’Conor). Back and forth the camera goes with much movement from the big family illustrating how little Christy himself can move. One of the surprises with My Left Foot was how almost totally free of the kind of manipulative sentimentality that the classic Hollywood biopic of struggles is usually full of. There is compassion for Christy Brown but not patronising sentiment. Ignored by his father Paddy (Ray McAnally) as a child who thinks the young Christy is stupid, Christy ‘earns’ his father’s love when he writes ‘mother’ in chalk on the floor with his left foot and is carried on Paddy’s shoulders to the pub.
The left foot of the title lends itself to various parts of the story, both dramatic and funny. Christy uses it to summon help for his collapsed mother by banging on the front door, he scores a penalty in a football match, paints, writes and tries to commit suicide all with this appendage. The moment he writes on the floor for the first time is exhilarating. Despite writing mother it is his father that steals the moment, his son now pronounced a ‘real’ Brown because he has proven himself as smart. His mother, who believed in and loved him from the first moment is robbed of a beautiful declaration of love. But this was a man’s world. The resounding message from the father throughout is the need to be obeyed in his own home.
Despite some shortcomings, My Left Foot is still Sheridan’s best film. Free of mawkish sentimentality and portraying a fascinating working class life it is the classic biopic that works for the most part. The acting is superb and those Oscars were earned. Given it was the 1980s and the Simpson/Bruckheimer world was in vogue it even with a Top Gun like freeze frame at the end. Happiness forever indeed.
My Left Foot
CinÉireann / December 2017 51