My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown

My Left Foot (1989) is Jim Sheridan's Irish biographical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It follows Christy Brown, born with severe cerebral palsy into a large working-class Dublin family. The only part of his body he fully controls is his left foot, and that foot teaches itself to write and paint.

At five, gripping a piece of chalk between his toes, Christy scrawls his first word on the floor, and his family finally sees the sharp mind locked inside an unmoving body. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the adult Christy with brutal physical precision, all twisted posture, slurred speech and the fury of a man written off as hopeless. Brenda Fricker is the mother who keeps the household afloat in poverty and refuses to give up on him, while Hugh O'Conor plays Christy as a boy.

The film draws on Brown's own memoir; he grew into a painter, poet and published author. At the 1990 ceremony Day-Lewis picked up the first of his Best Actor Oscars and Fricker took the supporting prize. This is unsentimental stuff, less a tidy inspirational tale than a portrait of a stubborn, prickly man. Stream My Left Foot (1989) online on iFILM.