Life can change in an instant. One second you are a successful and ruthless lawyer, the next you’re a simple man with absolutely no memory of who or where you are. The film “Regarding Henry” shows this perfectly as it travels through the life of a man named Henry Turner. To me the main focus of the film was how important family life is. Before the accident, Henry hardly even knew his daughter and almost never spoke to her.
At the start of the film the father-daughter relationship was very weak, he would never speak to her when he came home from work because he didn’t have time, but when he did he lectured to her – like when she spilled grape juice on his “prize piano” and yelled at her. His life revolved around the courtroom, where he spent most of his time. Sarah, his wife told him to apologize to his daughter, which he finally did after arguing with her. Even when he tried to apologize to her after a party, he found it difficult to express his feelings and just talked about the case he had won that day.
Before the accident Henry was always working, even when he came home, he would still continued to work. Henry was a self centered and arrogant man who was only interested in winning a case, working and smoking. Henry loved his eggs and was always at parties, celebrating or mocking his clients, which he was very good at. He was excellent at what he did and would go to any extent of lying to win “like the Matthew’s case. ” He was also extremely good with words and would always dress formally to get attention. Henry had to have the most expensive things of all and his house showed this off perfectly.
Henry was rude and never acknowledged the doorman Eddie or Rosella the maid. Even to Sarah he was not a loving husband, as he was having an affair with a woman named Linda who worked in the same firm as him. After the accident when Henry was in re-habilitation the first person he really met was his activity therapist, Bradley. Bradley taught Henry how to walk, talk and most of all how to be human again. Bradley changed Henry in almost every way he could and turned him into a kind, loving and affectionate person.
Bradley was almost like a father to him. I think that when Henry was in the hospital walking down the corridor it symbolized his long journey to recovery, as the hallways were very long. Henry changed in many ways after his accident, one thing that I noticed was that he regarded family life much more, and his relationship with his daughter now improved a lot more as well. He did not want Rachel his daughter to go to boarding school now because he missed her first eleven years and did not want to miss any more.
Henry also played with her a lot more and brought a dog to play with as well for company. I also noticed that when he was in re-habilitation he did not want to leave Bradley behind and go to his family because he did not know those people. Rachel showed him how to tie his shoelaces again as he once had done for her many years before and instantly he remembered ‘grey carpet’ and wanted to go home. He was looking forward to a new life of discovering who he was and where he fitted into the family.
