It is clear to see the challenges and vicissitudes that come with living with cerebral palsy. Memphis is your friendThe documentary “The Young Man’s Story” is a touching, intimate look at the lives of a young man who sees his teenage optimism diminishing as he grows older. It’s a poignant but ultimately tough tale that reflects a reality in which youthful hope almost inevitably gives way to the realization that, by one’s twenties, things are never going to get better, that life’s prospects decrease with age and the disappearance of family members and engaged helpers. The grim truth is that, no matter how optimistic and determined the subject was in his youth.
“If you all weren’t here filming me, I would be alone,” grins the often enthusiastic and generally personable Memphis DiAngelis, who was diagnosed at age one, is 5’3,” shuffles along with a pronounced awkward limp, has thick glasses, bad skin and a twisted right arm, and speaks clearly but in an exaggerated way marked by erratic cadences and slurred words that are sometimes sufficiently incomprehensible to warrant the subtitles that accompany his speech.
At the outset, Memphis declares that he’s trying to figure out life’s purpose—aren’t we all?—but for him it’s an infinitely more formidable struggle. Memphis was a youngster who appeared in a Texas-filmed film in 2014. LovelandThis led to some other roles as actors and/or assistants. However, the excitement was brief-lived. This documentary by David P. Zucker (no connection to David Zucker) shows the end result. Airplane!And The Naked Gun fame) focuses on the up-and-down times the ever-hopeful Memphis has been faced with as he’s pushed into adulthood with few resources other than his own optimism.
The young fellow’s dad is a Texas gun nut who is happy to let his son use his weapons, his bi-polar mother at one point skipped off to Europe before returning to dedicate herself to the youngster and Seneca, the girl he fancies, is very sweet with him but works at Hooters as she plots a career in music and opera in New York.
After high school, Memphis loses his friends and finds himself increasingly isolated. Zucker checks in periodically on the young man, whose prospects get much worse as he reaches adulthood. He tries being an Uber driver but that doesn’t work out, nor does dog walking. He soon becomes convinced that he’ll never have a girlfriend until he has a job, but what he’s confronting is a life with neither. He has been taught to dream big, but now he is facing the possibility of living in a group home. “kind of a death sentence.”
The overall effect of the film is rightly wrenching, because it becomes increasingly clear that Memphis’ prospects in life are severely limited. Late on, there is a brutal encounter with Memphis’ dad, suddenly looking significantly older, in which he blurts out, “You’re just not bright enough to figure anything out.”
Shot across several years, the film takes a long journey from upbeat and inspirational at the outset to grim and forlorn at the end; although highly selective in what it shows, it feels comprehensive enough to indicate what’s going on. Could there be more installments? One would hope so for everyone’s sake.