Stronger: Ordinary man, extraordinary courage

Occasionally — rarely — there comes along a movie you feel yourself privileged to have encountered. 

The mysterious, mystical perhaps, bricolage of moving pieces that make a film — screenplay, dramatic story arc, casting, performances, cinematography, art design, editing and soundtrack, all overseen by a sensitive and perceptive director, funded by a passionate and dedicated production company — leads to a whole that transcends these individual elements and becomes a coherent aesthetic experience: authentic on every level of art, emotion and the depiction of the human condition.

Just such a film is Stronger, the true story of the innocent bystander Jeff Bauman who lost his legs to one of the infamous bombs while he stood at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. 

The film, directed by David Gordon Green (stoner comedy Pineapple Express, teen drama George Washington), with script by Boston local John Pollono, is based on Bauman’s memoir. Also titled Stronger, it's his own account of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, on April 15, 2013, waiting for his ex-girlfriend to finish the race. Bauman is not especially a hero. He's a schlub in many ways: notoriously arriving late or not showing up at all, a Boston manchild who drinks too much and works too little, an everyman who coasts along in the deli department at CostCo, not an athlete himself but a fanboy who lives for the Bruins and Red Sox, not particularly sensitive or in tune with others, coddled into arrested development by family in general and infantilized by his mother in particular.

He's human, in other words. Flawed and imperfect, happy enough with his life, but totally unprepared for the consequences of the senseless destruction of life, limb and property that occurs on that fateful day.

But this is not a film about terrorism, though there are passing references. After all, Bauman witnesses, and later identifies to the FBI, bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who passes by him in hoodie and sunglasses, with a pressure-cooker bomb in his backpack. Though there are the omnipresent TV news broadcasts, updating us on the manhunt for the terrorist brothers and the shootout at the boat, this is not a movie about them.

It is a film about resilience and resolve, about survival and the need for hope, all delivered in raw and gritty gallows humor. Bauman recovers with the help of his smart-assed, f-bombing, loud, raucous, volatile, Stella-Artois-drinking, cigarette-smoking, Boston-accented, clannish family — warts and all. There are a lot of warts. And for sure there is a hell of a lot of resilience and resolve.

It’s so appropriate that his memoir should now be the basis of a film, for Bauman himself is a self-avowed film freak. He described that moment when he was lifted, legless, by the man in the cowboy hat and thrown into a wheelchair as similar to that scene in Pulp Fiction when John Travolta stabs Uma Thurman in the chest with the syringe of adrenaline and her body surges back to life. When Bauman is in the hospital, mouth and throat gagged by breathing tubes and thus unable to speak, he motions to his friends for a pen and paper and scribbles out “Lt. Dan,” a knowing reference to the film Forrest Gump. Later, as Bauman is to be fitted with prosthetic limbs, he imagines the experience might be like the superhuman Matt Damon in Elysium. But when he gets the legs, instead of feeling bionic, he feels like a helpless, hapless, hopeless gimp.

And playing this gimp is none other than Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Love & Other Drugs, Nocturnal Animals), who brings to this role a rich and textured sense of nuance: lovable, vulnerable, contradictory, never noble, simply real. The ex-girlfriend Erin Hurley is portrayed by the remarkable Tatiana Maslany, previously known for her TV work in the science fiction series Orphan Black. Maslany is Gyllenhaal's equal in giving us an aching authenticity that can take our breath away during those intense scenes between these two exes on their way to becoming friends again. Her own vulnerability is laced with steel as she must find a way to support Bauman yet let him find, or lose, his own way to a life without legs. There has ever been a more tender, sensuous, life-affirming celebration in film — a resounding "Yes" in the face of a brutalizing "No" — than when they consummate what they had so long denied. No pity fuck this.

Adding to this stunning cast is Miranda Richardson (Damage, The Crying Game, Enchanted April), a Brit who brilliantly evokes Bauman's mother Patty as blousy and disheveled, opinionated, ferocious, increasingly unhinged and jealous of Erin, even enjoying the vicarious thrill of being the mother of the victim, yet fiercely loving and loyal to her son. Scene after scene after scene with these three performers will lodge in your brain, and heart, for some time. All three should not be forgotten come Awards Season.

The film's supporting cast is filled with seasoned Hollywood performers and Boston-based locals, even novices, for a crucial authenticity of accent and demeanor, including some of Bauman's actual ER and prosthetic doctors and nurses and physical therapists playing themselves. Here is the critic's tremendous shout-out of gratitude and recognition for such medical staff, most often unheralded, who can (sometimes unknowingly) give their patients reasons to go on living.

Jeff Bauman is not put on a pedestal in this film. He is heroic, though not a Hero. He is inspirational, though not necessarily inspired. Like many others in such dire circumstances, he must simply find a way through all those stages of grief as he contends with what has been wrenched away from him. This movie could have been a manipulative, melodramatic endeavor — tugging heartstrings and soliciting tears. Instead, it legitimately touches the human heart and brings the needed emotional release without a single gratuitous frame or false move.

This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 6, 2017.