Three New Commercial Films with Positive Disabled Characters
by Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)

Three recent releases from the film studios of Iran, Denmark and the USA have characters with disabilities in pivotal roles, and who are for the most part presented in positive ways. They may not always be portrayed realistically, but they are at the very least three-dimensional and central to moving the story or plotline forward to resolution. Following are descriptions and a discussion of:

• The Color of Paradise, Iran
• Mifune, Denmark and
• The Bone Collector, USA

One scene in particular demonstrated the director's ease with blindness, a reason this film works as well as it does. In the woods, Mohammed hears a fledgling fall from its nest on to the ground, realizes there is an interested cat nearby, and makes it his mission to rescue the baby bird and return it to its home high in the trees. Most eight year olds launch heroic adventures and climb trees, although perhaps not very skillfully. The same is true of Mohammed and the scene is not exaggerated or maudlin, but shot in an entirely credible manner.

Another small gem of a scene shows Mohammed visiting the local school and impressing both the children and the teacher with his mastery of Braille. As happens in every country, the adult is as transfixed as the children by the seemingly magical translation of those strange, raised dots into language.

Without revealing the plot and the awkward deus ex machina ending, it was fascinating to watch how the director places the entire force of Islam in the "service of inclusion," clearly approving of any individual or community efforts to bring the boy into the fold of the family, local school and village. This is a dramatic tale of good and evil, reward and punishment, told within a sweeping panorama of the ebbs and tides of both Nature and emotions. From the disability angle, the film is so solidly on the side of acceptance and community integration that it made me very curious to know if it represents just this particular director's point of view or indicates a wider public discourse developing in Iran.

A Danish Town Fool
Mifune, by filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, is also a morality tale but cloaked more in grays than black and white. A Copenhagen yuppie, complete with cell phone, sports car and newly-acquired "trophy wife," is suddenly summoned home to a poor, remote town to handle his father's funeral. Having told his bride a thatch of lies about his familial and financial situation, he is now forced to lie again to explain this abrupt exit from their honeymoon.

Thus the stage is set for our anti-hero's jousting with his devils. And at first, it seems the story will be annoyingly elementary: rural=good, urban=bad, poverty=good, wealth etc. But, the story evolves into a somewhat more complex, humorous and entertaining scenario. At the center is Rud, the mentally limited brother who has lived at home all his life with their father on the meager family farm.

Most certainly, Rud is assigned the role of the holy or town fool; he carries the dramatic and moral weight of the innocent who somehow intuits it is his lot to teach his tormentors patience and kindness and point them towards rectitude and redemption. This is of course, an ancient stereotype, with, it seems, endless staying power.

However, similar to Four Weddings and a Funeral, where the most honest relationship in the film was between the protagonist and his deaf brother, here the childhood relationship between Rud and his disabled brother emerges to provide the pivotal denouement.  Mifune is the name of a Japanese movie star that also represents one of the many shared boyhood fantasy games that enabled the brothers to escape their dysfunctional family life.

Assuredly, this is not a great film, but a reasonably successful social commentary that does place the disabled character at the center of the action and develops him as fully as the other main personalities.

Quad Detective
No, I am not going to suggest that The Bone Collector, a Hollywood cereal box of a thriller, has any redeeming social significance. However, one does have the opportunity to watch the spectacularly virile Denzel Washington play a detective who has become quadriplegic but retains his erotic heat. There is no pretense of reality here: the newly-paralyzed homicide specialist has close to his bedside every technological toy in the forensic universe, as well as a seemingly 24/7 personal assistant who is a cross between a nurse and Miss Moneypenny, not to mention a picture-perfect Manhattan apartment.

In the finale, the villain is forced precipitously from his subterranean lair, leaving Washington, of course, about 15 seconds to figure out the criminal's pathology, his own escape route, and how to get the girl. As noted, there is nothing of importance going on in this film, but it is perhaps noteworthy that even in a mainstream Hollywood production, the lead character can now incur a substantial disability and retain all his abilities.