Review of Charly

Directed by Ralph Nelson and adapted from the novel 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes, the movie tells the story of Charlie Gordon (Cliff Robertson), a mentally handicapped bakery worker. I'm glad the movie change the title from Flowers for Algernon (which refers to the protagonist's fellow test subject - a white mouse) to Charly. Charlie soon become a test subject of his own, to an experiment to increase human intelligence. Led on, by his teacher Alice Kinnian (Claire Bloom) and other doctors, Charlie agree to the new surgical procedure, not knowing if it is going to work or not. When it was done on Gordon, things become clearer for him, leading to both positive triumph and negative tragic results. I have to say, without Cliff Robertson as Charlie Gordon, this movie wouldn't had work. Cliff Robertson brings in the role, both the childish charm, and the smarts. Cliff Robertson has always wanted to do this movie, ever since starting in the dramatic television TV Show's CBS's Steel Hour, where one of its episodes was 'The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon', an adaption of the same novel by Daniel Keyes. After a number of his TV shows, in which he acted upon were turned into films with other actors playing his role, such as 1961's the Hustler & 1962's Days of Wine and Roses. Robertson bought the rights to the story, hoping to star in the film version one day. To my knowledge, I heard that 1961's TV episode and this movie written by Stirling Silliphant are mostly similar to each other in the beginning, but the movie has some really awful montages to make the length of the story longer than a one hour movie. There is the awful creepiest and disturbing series of montages about Charlie learning about love & sex. The movie could had explore it in a clever way, but it just goes off the wall acid trip with awkward sexually assaults. The film uses a montage sequence to show Charlie with a mustache and goatee riding a motorcycle, kissing a series of different women, smoking and dancing. It's never explain if it was just a dream or it really did happen. I thought it really went so far off from the rest of the film, that it was distracting. I know, the producers probably wanted to show that he is going through extreme adolescence due to the speed of knowledge being fed into him, but I really doubt a growing genius is going to go all Brando from the Wild Ones. He's more liking to become a book nerd than that. About the romance, I thought it could had been told better, when he passes normal IQ and moves into the genius category. I would love to see the film explain more on his emotional development falling behind, as he become more misanthropy jaded and cynical. Unlike other critics, I love the Q&A sequence. It really hits home to see how much he was right about society in the future. You can really tell, the movie was made in the 1960's with this sequence in the film. You get all those split screens, multiple images, still shots or slow motion that kinda works, but also dissonantly out of place. It could had work more, if the movie follow the same format as the book. The book was told entirely in journal entries or progress reports. It does a wonderful job of showing how Charlie's intelligence changes. It is often used in School Study Media. There are many different between the book and the film version. The movie barely spoke about Charlie's abusive parents. Charlie's sexual issues are due to traumatic experiences with his mother, Rose; he almost has a reverse Oedipus Complex, fearing his mother and relying on his father for protection. There is no mention of the character of Fay Lilliman that was Charlie's love interest besides Alice. She was an overtly sexual, artistic, and whimsical person that could had been used in the scenes between Charlie as an adolescence male and Charlie as an ego mastermind. Nor does the movie explore Charlie's dealing with homosexuality. There isn't any mention of the religion tones such as the speech about Adam & Eve and the tree of knowledge. I found the biggest lost is the symbol of the window. The window symbolizes the emotional distance that Charlie feels from others of normal mental ability. I understand that even a slim novel has to be trimmed to fit into movie form, but other things were added that brought nothing of comparable value to the film. Film's direction is a bit clumsy in the middle, but it does find the right path by the end. I love the metaphors mention of Plato's Allegory of the Cave & Don Quixote. That really got me to like it. People who've read the literary work before seeing the film are usually biased against the film. I am definitely not part of that crowd, I found the movie thought provoking. The movie does show the mistreatment of the mentally disabled. There is a key scene where Charlie as a genius, helps a retarded waiter whose clumsiness is cruelly laughter at by the pub's patrons. This is after he finds out that he also been mistreated at his own job by his co-workers and Charlie himself repeatedly looks down on those around him for not being at his level of super-intelligence. Charlie struggles with the same tendency toward the same prejudice and condescension he has seen in other people, when dealing with the mentally disabled. Then there is the tension between intellect and emotion. Are people more compassionate, warm, and friendly when dumb down or when you gains intelligence, we tend to fight more often? Overall: Albert Einstein once quoted 'the different between stupidity and genius is that genius has it's limited'. While this movie is indeed limited, it was worth watching