CODA’s empathetic portrait of a deaf family provided cover for its cornball indie treacle, helping it win the most egregious Best Picture Oscar of the past decade. Five years later, director Siân Heder continues that modus operandi with Being Heumann, a creaky drama—the opening night film of the Toronto International Film Festival, after which it debuts in theaters on Nov. 6 and Apple TV on Nov. 13—that imagines its based-on-real-events tale in utterly clichéd fashion.
Ironically, for a story about unique outsiders fighting to be seen, heard, and accepted as they are, it follows every groan-worthy rule in the rah-rah uplift playbook.
In 1972, Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) navigates bustling New York City in her wheelchair, and Heder’s camera adopts her POV to viscerally underscore her arduous day-to-day struggle to get around. Being Heumann, alas, immediately sabotages this evocative moment by having Judy flip off a bus that honks at her for holding up traffic—a snapshot that’s supposed to italicize her brash attitude but is ruined by the fact that, by occupying an entire lane on Madison Avenue, she’s totally in the wrong and placing everyone (including herself) in danger.
Judy joins fellow protestors advocating for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Though that clause was inserted into the legislation when it passed in 1973 during the Nixon administration, it remained unsigned in the years that followed.
Consequently, Being Heumann leaps forward to 1977 San Francisco, with Judy organizing a group of disabled activists in an effort to convince Joseph A. Califano Jr. (Mark Ruffalo), the newly installed Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), to do the right thing and put his signature on Section 504. In doing so, he’d grant America’s handicapped men and women their basic rights—specifically, by forcing federal buildings and schools to install ramps to increase access and opportunity.
In its first few minutes, Being Heumann has one person exclaim about Judy, “She’s crazy!” and another label her a “radical crip,” just in case Madeley’s tough, no-nonsense demeanor didn’t get the point across that she’s a fiery advocate. Such is the simplicity of Heder and Rebekah Taussig’s script (based on Heumann’s memoir), whose depiction of Califano is equally gawky.
Embodied with maximum broadness by Ruffalo, who seems determined to crush any traces of subtlety underfoot, the politician is the material’s loud, insensitive, cartoony villain, bellowing about how Section 504 is “impossible” because it’ll cost billions to enact (and result in his firing), and defending his cruelty with claims about his long-standing support of the Civil Rights movement.
By the conclusion of Being Heumann, Ruffalo’s baddie will push past a barking dog to pratfall his way out of his home’s back door in order to sneak away from Judy and company—a scene of Saturday Night Live-grade goofiness. The rest of the film isn’t any more understated.
Judy pockets a toothbrush before heading to a downtown protest because she has a plan to orchestrate a “spontaneous” takeover of the city’s HEW building. Once there, she leads her compatriots—including, among others, Kitty Cone (Madeline Delp), Brad Lomax (Antwan Tolliver), and Hale Zukas (Andrew Pilkington), the last of whom uses an alphabet board to communicate—inside for what will eventually become the longest sit-in in United States history.
Being Heumann’s true-life saga is inherently rousing, and Heder’s decision to cast handicapped actors lends it authenticity. Yet her instincts invariably tend toward the cheesy. In the local HEW office, a secretary serves the invaders punch, much to the chagrin of her oh-so-flustered boss. TV reporter Evan White (Dylan O’Brien) is initially uncomfortable when Hale crashes his broadcast but, within minutes, is stating on-air that “their fortitude is truly inspirational.”
Shortly thereafter, he bolsters their resolve by reminding them that “these are real f---ing stakes,” which goes hand-in-hand with Judy’s prior pronouncement that “this is so much bigger than us.”
On and on, Being Heumann goes, stating everything as bluntly as possible while using Francesco Le Metre’s score to tell viewers what to anticipate and feel. Once entrenched in the HEW outpost, Judy contends with logistical hurdles (since her comrades require considerable care and medicine). But those minor inconveniences never feel grave because it’s clear, every step of the way, that Heder wants to stir, rather than rend, the heart.
Thus, she balances her faux-calamities with smoke-and-sex-filled parties, wheelchair races, and a tacked-on Judy subplot in which she canoodles in a freight elevator with able-bodied vet Jim (Jon Beavers).
When Judy’s straightforward tactics don’t succeed, she coordinates a hunger strike (“Who is she, Gandhi?” asks Califano). This risks the health of the protestors, earning her a dressing-down from Kitty, who makes her realize that though her “a--hole” behavior serves a purpose, she can’t put herself before the cause.
Madeley’s Judy, however, isn’t nearly as abrasive as everyone says she is—a symptom of Heder’s desire to keep the proceedings safe and palatable. Still, it’s the film’s hokeyness that elicits genuine exasperation, whether it’s the Ramones’ “Judy is a Punk” playing over a wannabe-badass slow-mo shot of Judy and others rolling through an airport, or a Califano lackey fleeing a hearing and getting chased—complete with a wipeout slip in a hallway—by good-guy Congressman George Miller (Rob Delaney).
Judy’s mission was principled and her accomplishments groundbreaking, but Being Heumann reconfigures them into the stuff of feel-good TV movies. The contest over Section 504 was a battle for representation, and Heder’s latest is part of that ongoing struggle, honoring the trials and tribulations (and triumphs) of those whom society treated with pity instead of respect.
Nonetheless, its moving message isn’t an excuse for its across-the-board clunkiness, which extends to a random bit involving the Black Panthers and racist cops, and two separate instances in which subservient women suggest to Califano—the worst of the film’s boorish white male authority figures—that perhaps the solution to this entire affair is simply listening to Judy.
Being Heumann is a case study in shoddy storytelling undermining virtuous intentions, all the way through to a de rigueur archival-footage closing credit sequence. A trailblazing life like Judy’s deserves more than this calculating by-the-book treatment.
