My Left Foot

Stories about people overcoming devastating handicaps have long been grist for the filmmaker's mill. The title of this screen adaptation of Christy Brown's best-selling autobiography refers to the only limb over which Brown, crippled since birth by a severe case of cerebral palsy, ever had any control. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the acclaimed Irish-born artist and author, as the film intercuts flashbacks of his formative years with scenes at a stately Dublin home in 1959. There, the wheelchair-bound Brown, guest of honor at a benefit dinner for a cerebral palsy foundation, first meets Mary (Ruth McCabe), a young nurse assigned to care for him for the evening. Presented...