Music Within

When was the last time you watched a morality play—much less one that deals with people battling incapacitating disabilities—that was also unabashedly, side-splittingly hilarious? If nothing comes to mind, perhaps that is reason alone to check out Music Within, a new independent film based on the true story of one man’s quest to improve the lives of millions of marginalized Americans.

Richard Pimentel (Ron Livingstone) is born into a wildly dysfunctional family. So it is rather surprising when he arrives at adulthood having not just survived, but actually thrived. He is blessed with the gift of gab and the ability to weave stories (and even scathing insults) in a way that is irresistible to anyone within earshot.

When Richard tries out for a debate team college scholarship, his mentor Dr. Ben Padrow (Hector Elizondo) admits that he is the single most gifted student he’s ever seen, but also rejects Richard on the grounds that he has nothing meaningful to say. “You must earn a point of view,” he tells the ambitious but untested young man.

Stung and surprised, Richard makes an impulsive decision to enlist in the Army and promptly finds himself in Vietnam. One fateful evening, a mortar round explodes dangerously close. While Richard survives the blast, his hearing does not. He is discharged and sent stateside with what little hearing he has left replaced with the maddening shrill of tinnitus.

Ron Livingston as Richard Pimentel

Richard does not waste time feeling sorry for himself. Refusing to let his disability or the narrow-minded prejudices of others keep him down, he learns to read lips and successfully bluffs his way into several jobs.

He falls in with a motley crew of colorful misfits, including Mike Stoltz (Yul Vazquez), a vet with an ocean of rage and nowhere to put it, Art Honneyman (Michael Sheen), a wheelchair bound victim of cerebral palsy who uses his rapier wit to deflect intolerance, and Christine (Melissa George) a college student who introduces Richard to the swinging world of free love.

Soon, Richard quits his job so he can help other disabled veterans find work. Word gets out and it isn’t long before he is handpicked by the national government to prepare a pilot program for assimilating the disabled into the workforce. That program goes on to become the Americans with Disabilities Act, a sea change that will forever alter the way in which this country treats its disabled citizens. Richard has found something meaningful to say.

Music Within is made in the tradition of other great films like 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives, which wrestle with heroes returning from the fields of battle less whole than when they left. That this subject matter could be this uplifting and feel-good is almost irreconcilable, and the credit must go to the film’s multiple screenwriters, one of whom, Mark Andrew Olsen, is a Christian and also penned One Night With the King.

Richard’s tour of duty in Vietnam

Music Within‘s message is one that should make Christians stand up and cheer. While the film does not incorporate a religious component into its plotline, many of Richard Pimentel’s actions mirror those of Christ, whether he knows it or not. Throughout the New Testament, Christ is found caring for the blind and the lame and other marginalized people whom even his disciples assume are infirmed due to sinfulness. Christ cuts through the religious nonsense of his day and reaches out a hand of unconditional love and healing to those who need it most.

Though Richard is incapable of granting physical healing to those he wants to help, his actions go a long way toward healing the social divide between the stigma of disability and bruised and battered heart that so often accompanies it. The filmmakers have constructed a film that illuminates the struggles and triumphs of those brave crusaders who blazed a trail for an entire country and did it will droll resolve.

That said, Music Within is far from a perfect film.

Usually, it is the script doesn’t live up to the production values, but here the production values are woefully outstripped by the relentlessly insightful and hilarious script. Music Within was obviously shot on a meager, shoestring budget, no matter how well it makes do with what it has.

Art and Christine were Richard’s good friends

While this is a small movie that spans a massive chunk of time—five decades—it does not do so in any sort of realistic fashion. Though the cars and fashions move with the momentum time, no real effort is made to age the actors.

Furthermore, Richard surmounts his disability far too quickly for us to ever feel that it was ever much of a hindrance in the first place, and tangentially, we never buy that he is deaf—even partially. Whether this is the fault of the editing or the always-delightful Ron Livingstone remains impossible to tell.

Michael Sheen, who was last seen as the dapper Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Oscar-nominated The Queen, here vanishes into a performance as Richard’s cerebral palsy-afflicted best friend that is nothing short of astonishing, but will probably be overlooked come awards season because of the diminutive nature of the film.

It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “Most people go to their graves with their music still inside them.” By facing down his demons and digging into his own heart to find his “music within,” Richard Pimentel was able to help countless others find their song.

Like the disabled characters in the film, the low-budget Music Within may not entirely work on the outside, but at its core beats a very funny, very smart and very moving heart of gold.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

How do Richard Pimentel’s actions mirror those of Christ? Give examples.
Have you ever been guilty of walking past someone with a disability and seeing only their handicap and not someone created in God’s image? How do we get past that?
In the latter half of Music Within, Richard becomes so obsessed with his job helping others, that he neglects himself and his own relationships. How does one balance ministering to others and caring for our first and foremost responsibility—our families?
Read Matthew 25:34-40, Isaiah 42:3, and Micah 6:8. How do these verses apply to the way we treat those with disabilities? Do Christians have any sort of obligations toward the disabled? If so, how might we act on those obligations?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Music Within is rated R for language including sexual references, and some drug content. Although the film never flagrantly overindulges in any of the following, the storyline, which charts five decades of Richard Pimentel’s real life, does involve the sexually swinging era of “free love,” frequent drinking and drug use, multiple suicide attempts, and a moderate degree of foul language.