From the New York Times, a review by Andy Webster of “Heavy Load,” a documentary about a British garage-punk band that is composed mainly of people with learning disabilities. The film doesn’t specify the nature of the disabilities, Webster says, but one band member has Down syndrome.

Depicted in the film is the band’s Stay up Late Campaign, which encourages people with disabilities to challenge the curfew system so they can choose the lives they want to be living.

An opening intertitle announces “A film about happiness.” Oh, please. It’s about struggle, the efforts of an ensemble wrestling with artistic obstacles as well as biological ones. It’s also a portrait of British band life: playing in smoky pubs and studios and at outdoor concerts and hustling tracks to a music publisher. And it is a portrait of a nation with social services and a public so compassionate it makes our own look heartless.

Other reviews:

Josh Rosenblatt in the Austin [Texas] Chronicle:

The story [Jerry Rothwell] captures in Heavy Load is a minor miracle, really, at once a classic rockumentary about a band and its creative and personal differences, an eye-opening look at the artistic and (more fascinating still) psychological/emotional lives of the mentally challenged, and a story about a group of people who go from part-time musicians to full-fledged social activists in the name of punk rock.

… Like true punks, the members of Heavy Load challenge the status quo loudly on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves … and in the process turn their hobby into a national movement of discontent, disaffection, and possibility.

Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times:

If “Heavy Load” has any point in particular to make about the disabled, it’s that, whatever degree of assistance they need to get through a day, they live in the same world and culture as everyone else, and make their own peace with it.

U.S. television premiere is tonight on IFC. (IFC photo in the New York Times)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 4:07 am and is filed under arts/music, documentary, Down syndrome, intellectual/developmental disabilities, learning disabilities, NOT2BEMISSED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.