Essay Questions

How does “Henry” the boxcar become a symbol suggestive of the broader problems of dealing with a debilitating physical condition?

Christy Brown is portrayed as a child and an adult in the film. As an adult, he is seen being pushed around in an old wooden boxcar which he nicknames “Henry.” Henry becomes a “chariot” for the young boy which allows him to fully enjoy social life with friends even in the face of jokes and some abuse. When Henry breaks down, however, it also represents a symbolic break with that social environment and a subsequent withdrawal into isolation. The Brown family cannot afford to buy Christy a wheelchair and so his dependence upon the mobility afforded by Henry also becomes his means of entering into social mobility. The sudden lack of access to Henry combined with the financial inability to replace it with a proper wheelchair have the combined effect of adding layers of mental and emotional disability to the physical. The consequences strongly suggest that much of the problems faced by those with physical impairments is related to the obstacles allowing free access into the surrounding social environment.

What is the broader societal significance of the moment in the pub when Mr. Brown introduces his son as a genius?

Christy’s father is arguably the most complicated character in the drama. In the early scenes with Christy as a boy, he can come across as nothing less than an outright jerk. As the story progresses, he becomes more sympathetic yet he never attains the level of admiration accorded Christy’s quite fierce mum. Christy’s father doubtlessly love his son from the beginning, but he seems ready to immediately dismiss him as forever being a burden upon a family facing quite enough burdens. It is a perspective we may not admire, but how many of us can truly say we might not feel the same? At least during the darkest days when the burden of Christy’s disability becomes much more starkly drawn?

It is not just the physical impairment that makes Christy a burden, but the assumed intellectual debit he brings. Mr. Brown is not just ready to dismiss Christy as a burden, but as entirely useless because he is, in the vernacular of time, an idiot. The sudden turnabout from dismissing Christy to announcing he is a genius is one that society must deal with constantly because when we assume completely idiocy in another, even the demonstration or manifestation of the simplest ability—such as spelling the word “mother”—is often also misinterpreted. One of the messages the film delivers quietly almost to the point of being subliminal is that society needs to stop making assumptions about both idiocy and genius when those assumptions are based a significant lack of necessary facts.

What scene did Daniel Day-Lewis virtually declare to be impossible to film after his initial reading of the script for this film?

Daniel Day-Lewis has been quoted as saying that he became obsessed with playing Christy Brown after reading the script and reaching the conclusion that the opening scene couldn’t be done. The opening scene, of course, shows Christy taking out a vinyl album, placing it onto a turntable, and moving the needle to a certain selection all using just his left foot operating as smoothly as if one were using his hand. (The scene then goes on to show him using his left foot to paint and write.) It is, indeed, an astonishing way to open the film and serves to immediately make clear to the audience just exactly what sort of unique person this guy most had never heard of before actually was in real life. That level of astonishment is then raised to an even higher level with the revelation that it is being done by the actor himself and not someone actually suffering from cerebral palsy who has been using is foot as a hand for decades. That the actor’s first reaction was that it was something which could not be done could not be more perfect if it is, indeed, true since the entire message of the movie is that, when all things are working together in unison, sometimes the impossible can become possible.