Portrayal of Disability in Recent Films: Notes
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
In late 2001 and early 2002 a spate of new commercial and independent films have either focused on disability as the primary theme or used it as a metaphor for other themes.
Kandahar
The latest by Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, this tortuous journey into the heart of Afghanistan was called by the San Francisco Chronicle, "a short matter-of-fact visit to hell...an utterly fascinating film." The director's filmography shows that both the plight of women and the situation of disabled people in his region of the world are familiar topics to him and this may be why they are so effortlessly and naturally introduced here. The plot doesn't matter (there isn't much of one), the cast of characters are mostly amateurs and the subtitles often seem clumsy or inadequate, yet some of the scenes will engrave themselves deeply into your memory and conscience.
One scene in particular manages to be simultaneously horrifying and visually stunning: a horde of young, male amputees race on crutches over sand dunes to be the first to reach prosthetic legs being parachuted toward them by a Red Cross/Crescent plane. A dozen questions come to mind-is this the usual delivery method, why are they all young men, won't the appliances self-destruct when they hit the sand, where are the prosthetic service providers who reportedly are in Afghanistan to customize fit, etc. There are no answers: this isn't that kind of film. Another dazzling scene records a long line of women in burkas snaking through the desert, each one wrapped in a vibrant but differently colored cocoon. The visual effect is jarring: it registers on the eye as startlingly beautiful while at the same time the mind recognizes the burka as today's symbol of women's repression. One can almost feel Makhmalbaf absorbing what to him is familiar terrain and reframing it with this duality to give outsiders-his audience--an opportunity to understand his views, his realities, this dichotomous landscape.
I Am Sam
This is Hollywood's latest interpretation of what it's like for the white American male adult to live with an intellectual disability, and just by these parameters alone, it's two shrimp farms better than "Forrest Gump." Sean Penn takes on the role of the intellectually disabled, single father being forced to confront the family court system to keep from losing his mentally agile, young daughter. A pat, linear interpretation of intellectual measurement sets up the plot: Sam is considered to have a mental age of seven, while his daughter has reached the chronological age of eight and therefore the court system is about to deem him an unfit parent. I hesitate to come down too hard on this film because it's well intended, the reviewers representing mental disability organizations are finding a lot of positive things to say about it, and because, after all, a few good actors with disabilities were hired to play Sam's buddies.
However, there are some inadvertently hilarious Hollywood touches here that demand attention. Unlike the vast majority of disabled Americans, Sam has a mainstream job (at Sta*bucks no less, the company all the anti-globalization demonstrators run towards with bricks), a succession of not-bad apartments in decent areas of town, and Michelle Pfeiffer as his pro-bono lawyer when he gets in trouble. And for better or worse, Sam has seemingly achieved all this on his own; there is nary a service provider, family member or advocate in sight.
One predictable disability-themed film fixture: the high priced, stressed out lawyer and other supporting characters will gratefully (tearfully) learn true family values from Sam's earnest simplicity. If you can set aside all this Hollywood furniture, there are some enjoyable and not unrealistic scenes between Sam and his daughter, with his helpful neighbor, in court and socializing with his friends. Overall, Sam is presented in a fairly believable fashion as working hard to live his own life, acknowledging both ups and downs, in contrast to Forrest Gump, who was presented as leapfrogging over any unpleasant obstacles and cruising through the speed bumps.
A Beautiful Mind
Director Ron Howard has carefully structured this biographical treatment of Nobel Prize winner John Nash, taking place over a 50 year period just following World War II, so that we can both witness the scientist's long battle with schizophrenia, and experience it from Nash's perspective. By using well-known events, such as the frantic build up of Cold War efforts to outpace Russian scientists, especially in matters of defense, and the McCarthy era paranoia about "sleepers" living in our midst, Howard manages to suggest that Nash's suspicions and anti-social behavior might be rational reactions to irrational times.
By book-ending Nash, played by Australian actor Russell Crowe, between an adoring wife who believes everything he says and an authoritarian psychiatrist who believes nothing he says, the film keeps us off-balance and intrigued. What is real here, what is not, where does the disease end and the man begin? These questions are treated with dignity, gentle humor and compassion. This is a compelling presentation of how schizophrenia can unfold, or at least how it did in the life of one man.
Based on a book of the same title, the film has been critiqued by some for over-simplifying and pouring treacle on both the life and disability of John Nash. But it seems that by paring some detail, there was then room to also reflect on not just the man and his disability but also the times he lived in, making it a much more worldly, complex film. The Crowe portrayal is vastly more subtle and less mannered than, for example, Geoffrey Rush's interpretation of a dysfunctional musician in "Shine," and is in serious contention for an Oscar.
Critics Are Confused
The fact that a number of films recently released deal with intellectual or emotional disability seems to have confused some of the mainstream critics who appear to find these conditions interchangeable. For example, in The Guardian, published in Britain, reviewer Mark Lawson wrote about the Oscar nominations on February 16: "Three of five nominees for best actor (Crowe, Penn, Wilkinson) undergo some sort of mental breakdown. The same applies to Judy Dench, Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei in the actress categories. In fact, of the 20 acting nominations, nine have plots involving neurological tragedies of some kind." Of course Sean Penn's character does not undergo a "breakdown," Sam's intellectual impairment is realistically presented as static throughout. Similarly, the characters played by Spacek and Tomei could probably be described as depressed, but do not undergo "breakdowns," defined by the Random House Dictionary as " sudden loss of ability to function efficiently." This tendency to conflate all mental disability, both emotional and intellectual in origin, shows that public education about various disabilities is still needed. "Breakdown" is most likely shorthand for "nervous breakdown," that misleading 1950's catchall term usually reserved for women's behavior found incomprehensible by men.
Incidentally
Several other recently released films have had incidental or stereotypical disability portrayals, left largely unexamined. For example, in Shipping News, a fairly bleak dramatization of life in a blustery Newfoundland fishing village, most of the adults seem to teeter back and forth between mental health and illness and the predictably associated violence and substance abuse. There is also a boy with a physical and mental disability, but he seems to exist mostly as a foil for other characters to demonstrate their goodliness. Similarly, the potency of In the Bedroom, an intensely acted drama, is diminished somewhat by its axiomatic assumption that the only response to grief is severe depression and the unavoidable culmination of severe depression is violence. And again in The Business of Strangers, an unusual plot is heightened by an impressive duet of actresses, who seesaw back and forth in their attempts to assume power, then, finally, dissipates into stereotypes about abuse begetting mental illness that then begets violence. In Shipping News, the proliferation of mental instability seemed more consonant with the landscape of the film, more reflective of the director and author's particular palette, but in the last two mentioned films, the introduction of emotional instability felt much more rote, producing that "balloon losing air" feeling that arises when a story reaches an abyss of desperation and the writer seems unsure of how to end it.
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