Recovery the movie 2007 staring David Tennant.

This is going to be a hard one to write about and I am not sure if I should post it to the media blog or the main one. Still, I will post to both, and I have to admit I haven’t been able to finish the film but I have been watching the David Tennant movie Recovery and it’s on Tubi if you want to watch it legally. But you can also find it online as well. It is a well-done movie and it is a very accurate portrayal of a brain injury.

It tells the story of  Allen head of a construction firm that suffers a traumatic brain injury and I have to say that its portrayal is accurate as it not only focuses on him as a brain injury survivor but also the family trying to accept that the person that they knew is gone and that there is a different person in place and the frustration of a person who “ present’s” as able-bodied but isn’t and has what we now know as a hidden disability as we don’t say invisible as this means that it may not be their, but hidden well it’s simply hidden from public view.  

I did resonate with the scene where he is trying to make his lunch and  spill the milk and he can’t figure out how to clean the milk up which makes it worse he is telling us he doesn’t need a babysitter but he does need some sort of care.   He gets frustrated that he needs a baby sitter and it’s true that he can’t be left alone this is true of most brain injury survivors in the first 3 to 6 months as the brain is injured and it’s healing, I see the first mistake the family makes is having a welcome home party as we see that he is still struggling and acting like a child and that the family has to make massive adjustments.  

In reading the comments of where you can find it, online and I won’t say where I am going to promote, watching content legally as the actors get paid, as well as the behind-the-scenes creative team.

But it is accurate in the way that the family responds to him coming out of the hospital and thinking that he is “ fixed” and I have to say I do agree with one commenter that the health system as it’s set in the UK failed the family as they didn’t know that there was a care program open to them that they just had to contact there local parish/ council to get a care assessment done. So many people who become disabled go through what this family goes through because people don’t see the disability they see the person and they have a hard time accepting that the person that they knew is gone and that they may never get them back.  

Also in the words of Jessica Kellgrad  Frozard when you become disabled no one hands you a big book on how to navigate care, health, and other social inclusion programs and some public servants have actively recently said

I do like the Doctor’s metaphor of the brain being a highway and that it’s trying pathways that they have never tried before. We see that this is something that we are more aware of as the movie came out in 2007 and we now know much more about neuroplasticity and brain recovery.

We also see that Allen would also be what we call lower functioning when he comes out of the hospital and does recover with family support. They use techniques that are now very common in disability care, such as sequencing, dressing, lists of what to do, and the very basics of routines as well.

We also see a family grieving for a Dad that they have lost and that they are at their wit’s end due to not being able to access the care they need for Allen, and we see that he goes through a grieving process in accepting that he does have brain damage, as we see he has to be taught how to behave again and how to have intimacy with his wife as when he comes out of hospital he is very inappropriate to women and in general as well, acting like a teen/ toddler in general.
This is where we start to talk about mental age in disability as there and I am included in this that there is a gap between developmental age and physical age and this can be important to remember when working or interacting with a person with a hidden or what we in Australia call a psychosocial disability, so this is a disability that is not evident in when you meet a person.

But like all disabilities there is a spectrum of disability and capability as well and it really is a combination of factors and what I like about this movie is that it doesn’t fall into tropes of inspiration porn, or white savour it is the reality of disability and this isn’t the  first time that David has done a show that features disability we see that he also has done a TV show their she goes based on a real life story of two writers for the BBC in there she goes about a child with an undiagnosed disability and how this effects their life’s and he plays the Dad as well and he coped some criticism of it as it was un politically correct and he handled it with his characteristic class and grace when asked about it at comic cons he responded that it’s the reality of disability and that if you are considering it up politically correct then you might need to re think what your perception of disability is as we know that in his DR who days and now he is generous with his time for both children and people with disabilities who have the interest in Dr Who, Good omens, Killgrave and his other works as well. 

So I have to be honest I haven’t finished watching the movie but I think it’s a watershed movie and makes disability very real in that it shows the stark reality of what a Brain injury can do to any family.  In the next post, I will talk about what a brain injury or any disability of a adult who had an equal relationship and how in general that can impact the family as siblings and a wife or husband need to take on the role of a caregiver, but their depending on the country is universal care programs they are limited in what conditions they cover and the amount of care that they provide but they can give respite to the family, in that they can give attention to siblings and help the family to catch up on basic housekeeping tasks that often get forgotten with a person with high care .needs such as laundry,  deep vacuuming and organizing cupboards to be effective in what a person is doing and these are tasks that if you have a in-home support worker can help you to do they can’t do it for you but can help you to do it.

So in the next post, I will talk about the reality and the links to real life as the technology has moved forward but the conversation is stuck in the past.