Disability has been explored in various films, but I'm not aware of any Italian film that has addressed spastic tetraparesis — the condition I have. That's why I want to revisit Gianni Amelio's film.
The film tackles urgent, vital questions that emerge around disability in a competitive, status-obsessed society like ours. And there's another theme worth examining: a parent discovers in his disabled child a host of problems he doesn't know how to solve.
The story begins with an encounter between the father, Gianni, and his disabled son, Paolo, whom he abandoned at birth and for whose mother's death he holds responsible.
Poor boy. What did he do to deserve this? How can a child already born into unfavorable circumstances be blamed for his mother's death? Yet how many parents today, unwilling to lose face in society or for other reasons, abandon their troubled children to institutions?
Only after the birth of a son by his second wife, and following a conversation with the uncle who has raised Paolo all these years, does Gianni take him back. He decides Paolo deserves that chance. Paolo, it turns out, is an intelligent and cheerful boy — so the father commits to helping him recover, both emotionally and neurologically.
The journey to Berlin and the stay at a clinic there prove to be a real failure. Paolo begins to show behavioral problems — or rather, like any fourteen-year-old, he asserts himself in various ways, leaving his father anxious and unsettled. Gradually, things become clearer: Gianni realizes his son is not a child anymore and that he needs greater independence and respect for his choices.
From a deeply personal standpoint, I can say this is precisely what most parents fail to grasp. They assume their disabled child's choices are always wrong, believing only they truly understand him and know what's best for him. But that reasoning can be mistaken. Every major decision is hard for anyone and carries risk — all the more so for someone with disabilities. So why put him in a difficult position? Why block his plans out of prejudice?
Back to the film. After a brief escape, Paolo returns to his father at the hotel, but he refuses to go back to the clinic. He invents excuses — needing to return home to his uncle's house, where he has things to take care of. Eventually his father convinces him to stay by promising to take him to find Christine, his beloved pen pal whom he knows only through the internet. Faced with such a promise, Paolo agrees to return to that dreadful center. But there both father and son realize they're not truly understood and that the staff cannot fulfill Gianni's greatest hope: having a completely normal son. As Gianni grasps that only his son, through his own willpower, can truly improve, the mother of Nadine — a disabled resident who has been there for years — reveals that Paolo will bring him serious problems in life. Her own Nadine causes her suffering too, and suffers herself. This brave and courageous mother confesses, weeping, that sometimes she thinks euthanasia — so widely discussed today — would be a liberation for her daughter. This moment of the film seems to connect logically to that larger question.
The story continues. After the bitter disappointment, Paolo grows happy thinking he'll soon be in Norway with his girlfriend — though this will later prove to be an illusion, as happens to many disabled people. Few can afford a partner. Everyone deludes himself once that he's found love somehow. But the truth is, love is hard to come by for disabled people. And they suffer when they see their nondisabled friends take the step into marriage or build stable relationships. Sometimes parents are to blame here too — overly anxious, too afraid of losing their "child" forever. This leads them to abruptly end the friendship their struggling son treasures, leaving him with regret. So it's not chance that kept Christine from Paolo. There's a deep emotional weight behind it — "love" that a person shouldn't feel, especially if he's disabled.
The only thing Paolo's father wants to think about now is his son as a "normal" individual. He throws Paolo's crutch into the sea almost as a victory gesture, thinking he won't need it anymore. He imagines Paolo will always be with him, comforting him in old age, accepting him in his new family alongside his "normal" son. This leads to a logical conclusion on this theme: "Is a child disabled only when his parent wants him to be?"
One more observation: who is this film for — disabled people or their parents? In my view, given the story and how it's told, it's aimed at parents, especially young ones, so they can give their child better guidance than was given in the past. It's also for disabled young people who still have time to correct the effects of any misguided education they may have received.
Rosa Maria Sonzini, 2005
