“The Brooke Ellison Story”
[] (Four stars)
Tonight at 8 on A&E
THE day after the sad death of Christopher Reeve, I opened an invitation that had arrived in the mail that day. It read: “Christopher Reeve invites you to join him. . . ”
The invitation was to a screening of “The Brooke Ellison Story,” an A&E original movie directed by Reeve from the true-life book of the same name.
Ellison, a typical 11-year-old kid from Long Island was struck by a car in 1990, leaving her with life-threatening spinal-cord injuries.
Although she not die, she was left paralyzed from the neck down. Through the unstinting devotion of her family – especially her mom who stayed with Brooke 24/7 and attended school with her daily – she graduated from Harvard despite seemingly insurmountable odds.
Ellison not only earned a Bachelor’s from Harvard – but then a Master’s degree from there. She is in a doctoral program now at Stony Brook University.
Reeve who himself turned unspeakable tragedy into triumph said he wanted very much to tell the story of what happens to an average family when tragedy tears apart their lives, and how they then cope with it.
“Most people don’t have any idea what it takes to end up sitting in a wheelchair in the morning,” he said.
“They see us in wheelchairs, but they have no idea how we get there. And what goes on behind the scenes between the time that you wake up and you actually end up in the chair. Particularly when you have a severe injury and you’re dependent on a ventilator and completely dependent on other people to do everything for you.”
This movie not only shows us just what life is like – and what this young, incredibly brave, and lovely young woman made of her life – but what Reeve managed to accomplish in his life by bringing her story to the small screen.
Starring Lacey Chabert as Brooke, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as her mom, Jean, and John Slattery as her dad, Ed, the story takes us from the day of the accident, the first day of school in September of 1990, right up until Brooke’s graduation from Harvard.
When you see this kid going back to middle school where all her friends are still the same, uninjured normal kids, or when she decides to apply to Harvard even though she can’t be left alone to attend a class, go to a concert or even go to bed, or when she falls in love with a boy at Harvard who takes her to a dance, your heart just breaks.
There’s not a missed beat or bad performance in the whole thing.
Mastrantonio’s Jean, the never-say-never/ will-of-iron mom, should win her an Emmy, as should Chabert’s portrayal of Brooke – which is so restrained, so dignified, so proud, that she made me cry my way through the entire movie.
And you will, too.