Family Portrait

By J.S.

BEST BOY Directed by Ira Wohl

A rare transformation takes place in this remarkable documentary film about the efforts of elderly parents to prepare a middleaged, retarded son for life without them. The first views of Philly, as 52-year-old Philip is called, show a stocky, dull-faced man with an unshaven jaw, thick lips and a gap in his mouth where several front teeth are missing. His speech--grunted single words, short sentences that do little better than repeat what has just been said to him --makes it clear that his intelligence is severely limited. The last look shows the same coarse face, behind which lives the same crippled mind. It is not a miracle that occurs, only a transformation. But when Philly's voice is heard as the final credits roll--he is singing The Anniversary Waltz, with the tune strong and true and the words mostly nonsense --the audience applauds.

The camera that has worked this change in the eye of the viewer belongs to Ira Wohl, a gifted documentary film maker who is also Philly's cousin. His approach during three years of filming was quite unlike the disdainful stare of cinema verite, although much of what he recorded is bleak. The tone of the film is passionate advocacy, and its real subject is the dignity of love in a family hard-pressed by age and illness. Pearl, Philly's mother, is in her late 70s, and Max, his father, is three years older and ailing. They have sheltered Philly all his life in their small home in Flushing, N.Y. But now changes must be made, and at the gentle urging of Ira, Philly begins to move out into the world.

With Ira and a woman friend, he makes his first trip to the zoo. "See what he does?" says Ira at the monkey cage. "Yeah!" says Philly. They move on to the tigers. "How do you like that?" Philly is excited and happy. "Yeah!" he answers. Back home he chatters happily with his mother about the outing, as a four-year-old child might do. Perception of Philly as a large, awkward child is a way for the viewer to think of him without horror. But he is not a child, and Wohl's film leads onlookers past this point--to an understanding of Philly as a grown man, cruelly limited, but with high courage and an enormous compensating ability to give and receive love.

Philly tries hard and succeeds a little at a school for retarded adults. He goes to a performance of Fiddler on the Roof, whose music he loves, and then backstage with the show's star, Zero Mostel. "How old are you?" asks Mostel. "Sixteen," says Philly, without hesitation. "Me too," says Mostel. Then they sing If I Were a Rich Man together, a comic genius and a man who could be called an idiot, meeting on equal terms of humanity.

Max dies, and tough old Pearl now seems weak and uncertain. The film is not simply about a son living on; it is about the shock and sadness of parents dying.

Ira suggests that it is time for Philly to move to a residence for retarded adults, and Pearl forlornly agrees. He is there, sparkling with happiness, as the film ends.

That was last July. Pearl died in February, but not before she and Philly saw Ira's movie together. --J.S.

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