20 Feb Down syndrome – a footnote

Pedro Almodóvar

Last Thursday, the Cape Breton Island Film Series showed Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces, which Roger Ebert describes as, “a voluptuary of a film, drunk on primary colors, caressing Penelope Cruz, using the devices of a Hitchcock to distract us with surfaces while the sinister uncoils beneath.” It’s a lush, layered melodrama, with lots of surprises hidden among its folds, including this utterly unexpected footnote to Contrarian’s conversation about whether medical science should try to “cure” Down syndrome.

The central character, Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), is a movie director who turns to script-writing after a brutal car accident leaves him blind. Early in the movie, Harry’s devoted agent, Judit García (Blanca Portillo), urges him to get started on a new screenplay. Mindful of Harry’s fragile finances, she suggests “something with fantasy or terror for kiddies is what it sells best.”

Harry: I thought of doing a story inspired by Arthur Miller’s son.

Arthur Miller

Judit: The writer who married Marilyn?

Harry: Yes. After Marilyn, he married the photojournalist Inge Morat, and they had a son. The kid was born with Down Syndrome, and Arthur Miller hid it. He doesn’t even mention him in his mémoires, and never wanted to see him. Despite his wife’s pleading, he never wanted to see him.

Judit: How terrible!

Harry: But one day they met by chance. Arthur Miller was speaking at a conference in defense of a mentally handicapped person who had been sentenced to death after a forced confession. Seated in the audience was his son with Down Syndrome. After the speech, the son went to the podium and hugged his father effusively. Arthur Miller had no idea how to shake off this unknown man until the man released him and said:

“I’m your son, Daniel. I’m so proud of you Papa.”

Although the scene prefigures the importance of father-son relationships in Broken Embraces, the movie never mentions the Millers again.

Lluís Homar

Arthur Miller, who died in 2005, is not only one of  America’s greatest playwrights, but also the unofficial tribune of the Left—a celebrated humanitarian who courageously stood up to the anti-Communist fear-mongering of the 1950s. Growing up in a liberal New England family of that era, Contrarian was raised on The Crucible, Miller’s play about the Salem witch hunt, a thinly disguised allegory about McCarthyism.

The exchange between Judit and Harry left me stunned, and wondering how much of it is true?

Virtually all of it, it seems, up to and including Daniel’s surprise embrace of his father at a September, 1995, conference on false confessions in Hartford, Connecticut, where Miller spoke in support of Richard Lapointe, a mentally challenged man who, his supporters contend, was falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to die. Vanity Fair broke the story in this 2007 exposé.

I’m still gobsmacked. Right-wing bloggers have had a great sport proclaiming that they always knew Miller was a no-good hypocrite. Their left-wing counterparts have been at pains to point out that, in 1966, when Danny was born, institutionalizing infants with Down Syndrome was still the norm, and the course advised by most doctors  (though increasingly ignored by mothers like Morat, who wanted to raise Danny at home, but bowed to the great writer’s wishes).

Now in his 40s, Danny is said to be doing well, holding down a job, and living quite independently. Apparently at the urging of his son-in-law, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Arthur Miller saw his son more often in the last decade of his life. Six weeks before he died, the playwright added a codicil to his will granting all four of his children an equal share of his estate.

While we can take some comfort in the fact that Down’s syndrome infants are no longer bundled off to institutions, our pleasure should be tempered by the knowledge that Richard Lapointe, the handicapped convict championed by Miller, is still seeking justice. His re-trial resumes in May.

Perhaps most important, Miller’s ignorance and shame should not obscure the equally dramatic story of Danny’s capacity for love and forgiveness. Let’s hope no one finds a cure for that.