Movies

I just got a Flixter account and wanted to highlight movies that I think do a fair job of portraying entertaining stories of people around the theme of disabilities. I'll admit, there's some decent movies with actors who do not have labels portraying characters who do: like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump , and Dustin Hoffman does okay in Rain Man, and Michael Keaton does alright in The Dream Team, and I did like What's Eating Gilbert Grape despite the unusual movie combo of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp together, and I do want to see The Other Sister. But for the cream of the crop, the best of these films in my opinion are the ones where the actors are people in real life with labels of disabilities portraying characters with labels of disabilities. Have you ever seen Pascal Duquenne in The Eighth Day? Wow! I just love this movie. Here's a clip from Youtube (what is a blog without YouTube these days?)

Inspiring. I wasn't into the ending, this French director had a flare for an absurdly trajic ending that was supposed to be happy? Regardless, the movie was laudable for the character interactions throughout the movie that attempt to emphasize the parallels in the main characters lives despite the apparent difference of disability labels. Paula Sage does an equally magnificent performance in Afterlife, a movie about a woman whose brother returns home to look after her when their mother becomes ill. Lastly, there's Wu Jiang in Shower. I just don't know if he's someone with who has a label in real life or not. I like not knowing where his acting his coming from, the mystery makes me wonder even more about his character. In real life, I also like to think that a person's label is less significant than getting to know their story. Their label is not the sum of who they are, there's a whole lot more to people than that, and there's a whole lot about people to relate to regardless of what their label is. Isn't that one reason why we watch movies and cry or laugh? Because we can relate to some of the characters and what they are experiencing? Not in a very interactive way, but it's entertaining that way nonetheless.
This list is hardly exhaustive, I wonder if you've come across some movies around themes of disabilities that you'd like to share?