[category]
[title]
Being Heumann is inspiring on many levels: it tells a story most people don’t know, offers representational diversity many viewers never see, and treats its characters with a respect that remains rare onscreen.
What’s too often missing, unfortunately, is the three-dimensional humanity that would elevate an undeniably admirable project into an artistically creative one.
You can understand why Siân Heder chose to adapt a chapter in Judy Heumann’s life as her follow-up to the Oscar-winning CODA: simply put, Heumann – who used a wheelchair throughout her life after contracting polio as a toddler – was a remarkable person with a remarkable history. And what better bedrock can there be for a crowd-pleasing biopic?
Most of the film is set in 1977, when Heumann (Ruth Madeley) is fed up: she’s been waiting years for Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act to be fulfilled. Disabled Americans are finally, legally entitled to curb cuts, ramps, interpreters, and other accessibility changes. But the politicians who can actually implement them – and most particularly Joseph Califano (Mark Ruffalo), the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare – simply aren’t interested.
So Heumann decides it’s time to take control. She and her colleague Kitty Cone (Madeline Delp, lovely) organise a San Francisco sit-in with other activists that eventually gathers national attention, thanks to a young newscaster (Dylan O’Brien).
The scenes in which the protesters have to design their own adaptations both to enter and remain inside a federal building are the best, because Heder and co-writer Rebekah Taussig allow the characters room to expand. They aren’t just symbols of determined strength, they’re people who get hungry, or flirty, or cranky. And despite their many disagreements, they ultimately work together to solve problems the government should have handled long before. Many in the supporting cast have the freedom to create humor and warmth, including Charlie Rush-Reese as blind activist Dennis Billups; Andrew Pilkington as Hale Zukas, who communicates with a pointer and letter board; and Antwan Tolliver as Brad Lomax, a Black Panther who has multiple sclerosis.
What’s too often missing is three-dimensional humanity
In contrast, Heder and Taussig treat their main characters as clichéd archetypes, from the stubbornly feisty heroine to the cartoonishly evil villain. (The way Ruffalo stomps around, it’s surprising he didn’t insist on a mustache to twirl.) Madeley carries the film with charismatic confidence, but she’s regrettably limited by Heder’s awed vision of her as A Woman Who Changed the World. The setting and details are similarly broad; bad wigs and obvious costuming feel like minimal complaints in a film with an essential story to tell, but they create further distance from a real event with enormous impact.
In a script filled with familiar beats, though, the filmmakers did make a particularly wise structural choice: focusing on one moment in Heumann’s overwhelmingly influential life, rather than relying on a more traditional biographical structure. (Heumann passed away at 75, in 2023.)
That being the case, there’s a lot left to know. Heder herself first came upon Heumann’s story when she saw the clear-eyed 2020 documentary Crip Camp, which features several of this film’s activists. If you want a deeper look at people who truly did change the world, that would be an excellent place to begin.
In US theaters Fri Nov 6. In UK and Ireland cinemas Nov 13.