Charly (23 September 1968)
directed by Ralph Nelson
starring Cliff Robertson, Claire Bloom, Lilia Skala, Leon Janney, Dick van Patten, Edward McNally, Barney Martin
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MPAA rating: Studio: ABC Pictures, Selmur Productions, Buena Vista Pictures Script: Stirling Silliphant Based on the book by: Daniel Keyes Music: Ravi Shankar Running time: 103 minutes Suggested retail price: $14.95 (US) Tags: disability; Drama; drugs; mental retardation; mice; motorcycles; novel adaptation; Science Fiction Tactical strength: [6/10]
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Charly "documents" the transformation of a mentally retarded man into a genius and his subsequent decline back to mental retardation. Charly (Cliff Robertson) lives a self-sufficient life as a mentally retarded man. He has a job sweeping up at a bakery, and he goes to night school trying to improve his reading and writing. His teacher Alice (Claire Bloom) has Charly evaluated for a surgical procedure that might improve his mental capacity. The procedure has worked for mice, and the scientists want to try the procedure on a human subject. Charly has the surgery and within a few months develops mental abilities that would rival or surpass Einstein. But then the snag that science couldn't foresee: the surgery only provides temporary improvement.
So the last half of the movie descends into a "science bad, love good" cliché. First, the scientists argue about how fast to push Charly's development. His intelligence advances much faster than his emotional state, so he has the mental capacity of a college professor and the emotional capacity of a five-year-old. With Charly's enhanced intelligence also comes an enhanced libido, and he makes advances toward Alice. Alice rejects Charly's initial sexual advances, and his limited emotional development can't handle the rejection. So Charly deals with rejection by joining a motorcycle gang, smoking pot, and spending time in dance clubs -- all documented in a multiple frame montage. Charly "wises up" and returns home to find Alice waiting for him, and they embark on a romantic expedition again documented by a montage.
Finally, the big day comes when the scientists will show off Charly to their peers. We see Charly in a bright spotlight answering questions to the faceless experts, and Charly confounds them with rhetoric about the "brave new world" headed for destruction. At the conference, Charly learns that the mice that received the same surgery have started dying, and he infers that he will soon decline back to his original state. To demonstrate Charly's distraught state, we see him running through figurative mazes of white hallways and meeting himself in a retarded state, and all these scenes of psychological discord accompanied by equally discordant music. This visual and audio metaphor for Charly's psychological state might have seemed new in 1968, but today seems campy and overly dramatic. Once Charly recovers from the psychological shock, he applies all his genius to solving his problem. He works relentlessly feeding data and analysis into computers and comes to the conclusion: man isn't ready to meddle with the mind. Ultimately, we have a Frankenstein's monster story retold in modern times but still warning us about science meddling in areas where it doesn't belong.
I do have to say that Cliff Robertson does an excellent job portraying the various aspects of Charly's personality, for which he earned an Oscar, but overall the heavy-handed anti-science themes and now anachronistic presentation style overburden the story line for a less-than-pleasing effect.
