Music Within

THE MUSIC WITHIN (2007) **1/2 Ron Livingston, Melissa George, Michael Sheen, Yul Vazquez, Rebecca De Mornay, Hector Elizondo, Leslie Nielsen. Livingston gives one of his best performances to date in this biography of Richard Pimentel, whose deafness resulted in Vietnam lead him to speak out on behalf of those discriminated for their handicaps and led to the Americans With Disabilities Act. While the film feels like a Hallmark TV Movie the acting is sublimely uniform – Sheen is memorable as Pimentel's cerebral palsy afflicted best friend – and the direction by newcomer Steven Sawalich keeps the story straight forward without being mawkishly maudlin.

When you have been watching movies for over 30 years and you come across a gem like Music Within, it keeps you coming back for more. This true story (The subject of the film Richard Pimentel verified the historical accuracy at the Dallas Film Festival screening) is both heartfelt, informative and laced sensitively with humor and insightful one liners. I had the privilege of seeing this at the Dallas Film Festival, though it does not apparently open for general release until September. After the screening, the Director, producer and both Ron Livingstone and Yul Vazquez were accompanied by Richard Pimentel himself for Q and A, which allowed some helpful insights not only into the making of the movie, but also the impact the movie is hopefully going to have on understanding those with disabilities and their assimilation into the workplace. The story itself unfolds chronologically and retells Richard's quest to find the 'music within' through a series of events including his own injury in Vietnam that caused a sever hearing disability and started Richard on the road to his eventual calling to aid others in finding work despite their disabilities. Eventually this even to a significant impact on the enacting of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As for the film itself, the acting of Ron Livingstone and Michael Sheen is particularly notable and I would be surprised if Sheen is not seen as a candidate for best supporting actor at the Academy awards next year. The other notable success is the outstanding screenplay. McKinney,Kennemer and Olsen may not yet be household names, but based on this showing, we will be seeing a lot more of their work in the future. Highly recommended - don't miss it when it comes to a cinema near you!

As a Vietnam Vet with similar disabilities I could relate to what Richard had to go through to be recognized. The movie was funny, but to the point. There should be an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for Michael Sheen. I previewed Music Within at the film festival in Palm Springs. We were able to question the actors, director and producer at the completion of the showing. That was very instructive. Richard valadated the historic accuracy of the story and the impact Americans with Disabilities had on the Presendenal election for George H Bush. ADA was passed in his administration. The impact of Richard's disabilitiy and his recovery prompted my trip to see the same audiologist and I can now hear much better than with the VA's devices.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against qualified people with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and governmental activities. This act was passed in 1990.

Ron Livingston is Richard Pimentel, born in the late 1940s, and who always had superb oratory skills for his age. He is widely credited with being instrumental in having the ADA established. Richard had been in Viet Nam and there had his hearing destroyed by a close-range blast. Trying to "find his own voice" in life, his own "music within", he eventually realized that it was to help the masses of disabled veterans and then all persons with disabilities.

Rebecca De Mornay is good as Richard's Mom, who suffered from numerous miscarriages and ended up in an institution. Hector Elizondo is good as Dr. Padrow, the professor that told Richard as a young man, go out and find out what you really believe in. Australian Melissa George is good as Richard's girlfriend Christine who found it difficult to get attention away from Richard's causes.

Good movie, well-paced, of a person who has been instrumental in a key chapter of US history, providing equal opportunities for the disabled.

Update Aug 2021: I watched it again on DVD almost 13 years after my first viewing and it was totally fresh. All the good things many reviewers say about the movie are accurate.

Are you familiar with the character "Geordi" on Star Trek the Next Generation? He's a blind character on the Starship Enterprise, Chief Engineer. The problem? He just happens to have a visor that enables him to see perfectly, so he's basically no different from a sighted person. Just a gimmick with a goofy visor.

Similarly, in "Music Within", we get a supposedly deaf man, but after a 12-second montage of him learning to read lips, he is absolutely "normal". He understands people just fine (even when their backs are to him), and when they speak to him he looks them in the eye, not the lips (major oversight by actor Ron Livingston). And just like Geordi's visor, he has a mysterious device strapped to his telephone that makes him able to understand everything perfectly (even though we're repeatedly shown that $1000 hearing aids don't work for him).

Why am I making such a big deal of this seemingly insignificant point? Because it undermines the supposed message of the whole story: that disabled people are exceptional *in their own right*. By making the lead character a deaf person who can hear, by making Geordi a blind man who can see, Hollywood glosses over the reality of having a disability thereby reducing it to trivial.

And that's my gripe with this movie; it's has a very "ABC Afterschool Special" feel to it. The producers tackle a difficult subject but only superficially. Just enough to give us a rousing feeling of warmth.

Is that warmth, or is that just my colostomy bag springing a leak again? Sheesh.

Like several other reviewers, I give this movie a thumbs up for a great subject, but I give it a thumbs down for its clunky, superficial and slightly hypocritical presentation. The whole thing feels somewhat contrived.

The scenes showing discrimination are cartoonishly brutal, and it makes you think everyone in the 70s was a tactless creep. I was alive in the 70s, and while I fully agree that disabled people were overlooked, I never noticed the outright hatred that is portrayed in this film. And we're supposed to believe that the American Disabilities Act suddenly made people tolerant & friendly? That's a little too black&white for me to swallow.

On another note, I agree with what another reviewer said about casting Ron Livingston as Richard Pimmentel. The real Richard Pimmentel is a heavyset man. Why couldn't the producers cast someone who weighed 280 lbs like the real Pimmentel? Or did they themselves discriminate based on looks? Sheesh.

One day Hollywood will make a movie about disabled people and cast REAL disabled people. Until then, I won't be impressed by any lofty message they're trying to impart. We can applaud Michael Sheen all day for his portrayal of a man with Cerebral Palsy, but somewhere out there is an actor with real CP who's out of work because directors figure he's too much trouble to work with.

UPDATE A FEW YEARS LATER...

On that last note I just wrote, I finally saw a great film about a disabled (paraplegic) musician which actually stars a real paraplegic actor. Check out "Sympathy for Delicious" a powerful film about a wheelchair-bound 'rockstar' who possibly has supernatural powers. Starring, written and directed by a man who is paralyzed from the waist down in real life, you can count on a genuine presentation without any fake Geordi visors for the blind or magic bionic telephone ears for the deaf.