After just a few minutes, it's hard not to recognize My Left Foot as a very Irish picture. It is infused with its Irishness from the start, and not just the roster of Irish actors including Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, and Hugh O'Conor that scrolls by in the opening credits. Nor does it feel the need to inundate the viewer with reminders of such, leaving the understanding that the culture and country to be explored is Ireland without hammering the point home with characters constantly spouting "This is Ireland" and singing pub songs regaling us with our locale.There's no other way to put this, but the film just ... breathes. The exposition is so minimal to start the film that I didn't discover Christy Brown had cerebral palsy until nearly an hour into the picture. Much of the early plot details this poor lump of a boy at the bottom of the stairs, never expounding upon the state of his condition.
But in a sense, that seems true to the cultural treatment of Brown's condition. Unspoken, a pox upon the House of Brown, a child to pitied, shunned, and neglected. After his mother has a heart attack, a neighbor angrily spits that there was Christy, "dumb at the bottom of the stairs."
My Left Foot is a series of collisions, between characters, classes, traditions, and emotions. For example, though played with subtlety, the question of masculinity may be the most interesting to me. A man of manual labor, defined by the amount of children he has, the quantity of drink he can consume, and the bread he brings home for his family, Christy's father Paddy struggles to cope with his lame son, unable to accept the state of his son's health or his capacity and thirst for knowledge. Though he feels responsible and diminished as a man for Christy's cerebral palsy, he buries these inadequacies or lashes out with a violent temper his wife and children, but never the source of his angst, his crippled son. Speaking to the Irish condition, this is his lot in life, and how dare he question it? Life is much easier when you accept the status you have and forgo your dreams of betterment and achievement.
Christy struggles his own definitions of masculinity, failing to woo the object of his youthful affections, and struggling prove his masculine worth to the unrequited love of his life, his therapist, Dr. Carr, despite his enormous success as an artist. The resolution of these collisions result in terrific explosions of emotions: from Paddy hoisting his son to his shoulder to announce proudly to the local watering hole, "This is Christy Brown. My son. Genius," to Christy's drunken outburst at a fine restaurant when Dr. Carr spurns his pronouncement of love which predicates the angry reaction of Peter, a man who feigned praise just moments before at the unveiling of Christy's work in his gallery.
A cultural theme present in both the buoyant The Quiet Man and the somber My Left Foot is the Irish notion of strongly defined gender roles. While Paddy and Christy struggle with their masculinity, society's expectation for the woman's dependence, especially financially, is an interesting trope to play with. While Mary Kate challenges her man's cowardice in avoiding conflict to recover her dowry, Mrs. Brown defiantly hides her small pittance of pounds in the chimney, knowing her husband would not only disapprove, but would provincially claim the money as the family breadwinner. When discovered, she boldly declares it not only as hers, but earmarked for Christy's wheelchair. Her recalcitrance defies not just her husband, but cultural norms, stowing money for the good of the lame son, while the rest of the family freezes in the bitter of winter without coal to burn. It was her money; she earned it, hence her difficulty in accepting the 800£ Christy has earned from his book sales.
My Left Foot is an excellent movie, and sure it leaves out the morose death by pork chop ending of the real world, but its deep reverence for the Irish culture exudes enough drama to earn a storied place in the Irish cinematic canon.
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