This is a genuine crowd-pleaser, ‘I Swear’
Like autism, Tourette’s syndrome is and always has been widely misunderstood and underserved by an uneducated neurotypical population. Part of that unenlightenment is due to the scant research conducted on both conditions prior to the late 1980s. And for people like me on the autism spectrum, it often leaves you feeling alone on a deserted island, knowing you’re “different,” but at a loss to understand why. That no doubt explains why I felt such a kinship with the BAFTA-winning “I Swear,” an earnest depiction of the loneliness of growing up with a neuroabnormality that can involuntarily render you a social pariah.
It’s based on the life of John Davidson, a budding Scottish soccer prodigy, whose path to greatness was derailed in 1983 by the onset of Tourette’s at age 15. Almost overnight, it transformed John (a fabulous Scott Ellis Watson) from a popular, congenial jock with unlimited athletic potential into a tic-filled mess who, through no fault of his own, frightened his classmates with unpredictable, violent outbursts and offensive language. Within days, he’d lost most of his friends, got booted from his prep school’s “football” team and ultimately expelled.
Even his Mam (Shirley Henderson), Dad (Steven Cree) and three younger siblings took offense over his swearing and spitting at the dinner table. To them, he was a source of embarrassment and shame, leaving young John suicidal and horribly alone, emotions that Watson conveys with such skill and authenticity that your heart has no choice but to break. Unimaginably, his situation is even worse when the film jumps ahead a decade to John, now an adult, played by a remarkable Robert Aramayo.
He’s a jobless, friendless lump on disability and completely abandoned by his jerk of a father. Not that Mam is any more compassionate. She remains, but Henderson, with a performance that infuses Mam with such bitterness and self-pity that John would no doubt be better served without her.
Which then opens the door to reconnect with Dottie (Maxine Peake), the mother of his longtime-no-see mate, Murray (Francesco Piacentini-Smith). A former psychiatric nurse, eager for a distraction from her terminal cancer diagnosis, Dottie makes John her charge, asks him to move in with her, Murray, and her great sport of a husband, Chris (David Carlyle). It’s the beginning of a truly beautiful friendship in which Dottie not only teaches John to stop apologizing for his every impromptu eruption, but also finds him a job at the local community center helping the building’s maintenance manager, Tommy (the great Peter Mullan).
That’s the basic outline of writer-director Kirk Jones’ (“Waking Ned Devine”) script, which predictably takes on a highly familiar arc of the “disabled” man learning to love himself through newfound friends who take the time to understand him and his condition. But every time Jones threatens to venture into disease-of-the-week territory, Aramayo bails him out with a performance that blows you away with not just its accuracy but the enormous empathy he elicits while movingly conveying the immense challenges of gaining acceptance by a largely uneducated public.
At first, John’s various quirks are juvenilely humorous, simply because they shatter all decorum, including the opening scene, set in 2019, when John, about to receive the OBE from Her Highness, shouts, “fuck the queen.” But they gradually gain a more profound resonance as his cursing – called coprolalia – unintentionally draws him into embarrassments, beatings and even arrests. These are the moments when Jones’ film is at its most affecting. It’s also when John flips the switch from victim to crusader, which is great for him but bad for the movie. Instead of dialogue, Jones goes for the fast, easy musical montages that serve up platitudes. It doesn’t derail the picture, but it certainly lessens the impact.
Never, though, does Aramayo’s BAFTA-winning performance stray, keeping you amazed by how genuinely he projects John’s hour-by-hour struggles to fit in with his community. I also like that Jones allows John to always remain the same. The norm in these types of socially conscious films is for the afflicted person to undergo a transformation. But here, it’s the people around him who evolve, including his Mam, to a degree.
Yet, the judgments and pearl-clutching haven’t completely stopped, as the real John recently found out at the BAFTA Awards, where he came under fire for loudly uttering the “N” word when “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting. The backlash was immediate and a bit unfair, given that such racial slurs aren’t all that foreign to Tourette’s sufferers, whose brains, for still unknown reasons, are drawn to taboo words.
You gotta love the irony that the same folks who (deservedly) voted Aramayo Best Actor, voiced outrage when the man he portrayed displays one of the most common Tourette’s tics. Did they not watch the movie? But I digress. No overblown “controversy” should be allowed to diminish the important and, yes, highly entertaining service “I Swear” provides.
It’s funny, endearing and most of all illuminating, the kind of movie the British used to make with great regularity, from “Billy Elliot” to “The Full Monty.” And “I Swear” belongs right there beside them, a film that is simple in structure, but profound in its mission and intent.
Movie review
I Swear
Rated: R for language throughout and some violence
Cast: Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan, Scott Ellis Watson and Shirley Henderson
Director: Kirk Jones
Writer: Kirk Jones
Runtime: 120 minutes
Where: In theaters April 24
Grade: B+
