His struggles with Tourette's

   Coprolalia is the term applied to people with Tourette's Syndrome who are subject to involuntary bursts of profanity. These often untimely explosions affect somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of those afflicted with Tourette's.

     The movie I Swear uses coprolalia to serious and comic effect in telling the real-life story of John Davidson (Robert Aramayo), a young Scottish man who suffers from the rejections of those who don't realize that his disruptions are involuntary. Davidson eventually becomes an educator about the syndrome, as well as a helpmate to those who, like him, suffer from it.

     Director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) begins his film in 2019 with a scene in which Davidson is about to receive an award from Queen Elizabeth. Nervous about appearing at a public ceremony, Davidson is struck by an outburst in which he shouts, "Fuck the Queen."

      This prologue encapsulates the difficulties faced by those dealing with Tourette's. Elizabeth carries on, obviously prepared for a man who's being honored for his service to the Tourette's community. 

      The movie then flashes back to 1983 when, at the age of 14, Davidson (played as a boy by Scott Ellis Watson) began to develop Tourette's, perhaps the most effective part of the movie because a relatively unknown affliction is misunderstood by the educators who encounter it and by Davidson's parents.

    Davidson's mom (Shirley Henderson) treats the malady as if it were a breach of propriety. His father (Steven Cree) leaves the family, and Davidson begins to suffer from isolation and rejection.

      Later, as a young man, Davidson meets Dotty (Maxine Peake), a nurse who invites him into her home, encourages him to get off the drugs he's being fed, and tries to normalize Davidson's life. She becomes a surrogate mom, aided by a caretaker at a local community center (Peter Mullan), where Davidson finds employment.

      A barroom brawl lands Davidson in court, an example of what can happen when others misread his behavior, which sometimes includes abrupt lunging movements. Later, he'll take part in a University of Nottingham study that uses a device to control tics and disruptive speech. Davidson gets a taste of normality.

     Eventually, Jones turns the movie into didactic lesson on Tourette's that's clearly designed to expand audience awareness, somewhat in the fashion of a public service announcement. By then we've already gotten the point, the problem with Tourette's isn't Davidson; it's an ignorant public.

    Marked by explosive tics and inappropriate outbursts of profanity as it is, Aramayo's performance brings Davidson's Tourette's to life while making sure that we can relate to the human  behind it. *

*Ironically, the real John Davidson found himself in the news recently when he disrupted Britain's BAFTA awards, shouting a racial epithet when actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on stage for Sinners. The BBC apologized for not editing Davidson's outburst from the broadcast, which was shown on tape delay. The point of I Swear is to remind viewers that people with Tourette's can't control these episodes. At the awards, Robert Aramayo won best actor for his performance. 

        

The last days of a great comic duo

Stan & Ollie reveals Laurel and Hardy in a moment of decline.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were great comic movie stars who established themselves as a team during the late 1920s and remained active for almost two decades. Laurel, an Englishman, and Hardy, an American, became famous for beautifully sustained slapstick routines that revolved around the key attributes of each of their comic characters. The addled Stan played against the always exasperated Ollie.

Fortunately for my generation, Laurel and Hardy films outlasted the duo’s prime, becoming staples of 1950s television, at least where I grew up, New Jersey within reach of New York TV.

I'm not sure how the accepted wisdom evolved, but Laurel came to be recognized as the reigning genius of the comic duo, an obsessive thinker when it came to inventing routines and working out their intricacies. Laurel may have been the brains of the outfit, but for most of us, it's impossible to imagine Laurel without Hardy.

The movie Stan & Ollie pays fitting tribute to the comic duo, focusing on them mostly at the end of their careers. With their film opportunities radically diminished, Stan (Steve Coogan) and Ollie (John C. Reilly) travel to England. They hope to use stage appearances to polish their act while Stan seeks funding for a new movie.

The atmosphere surrounding the trip isn't exactly buoyant. Ollie's health is fragile and the two haven't worked together for a while.

It should come as no surprise to those familiar with any of the Trip movies starring Coogan and Rob Brydon that Coogan is an accomplished impressionist. He makes a fine Laurel, the muddled, incompetent on-screen comic whose calculations dominate his off-screen life. He always seems to be working on something.

Reilly delivers the movie's biggest surprise. Thanks to some prodigious make-up, Reilly has taken on Hardy's look and his overweight huffing. He also masters Hardy's signature moves: from fiddling with the ends of his tie to delivering some of Ollie's trademark lines about how the clueless Stan has landed him in "another fine mess."

Working from a screenplay by Jeff Pope, director John S. Baird sets most of the movie in various down-scale British theaters in 1953. It may not be the limelight, but the two carry on, and the actors make it clear that once the curtain rises, Stan and Ollie give even the smallest audiences their best.

Baird doesn't shrink from the sadness of the situation. Hardy feels the pain that he believes stems from not being loved by Stan. In this reading of the story, Stan loved the act more than he loved the man.

While waiting for news of their pending movie, Laurel and Hardy also await the arrival of their wives, played with deft comic touches by Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson.

Despite some tension between Laurel and Hardy, the movie never develops a hard edge, perhaps because Baird tempers the film's melancholy with appropriate affection for two screen legends.

I'm fearful that younger audiences will not seek out the modestly made Stan & Ollie. That would be a shame because if they did, they'd probably hasten to YouTube, where they could discover the joys of Stan & Ollie's comedy and learn something about the fleeting nature of fame, even for those who scale the highest of movie heights.