Walter (1986) (TV Film)

a.k.a.  1. Walter and June 2. Loving Walter

Disabilities:  Learning Difficulty

Comments:   This is a superb though sad film about a young man with learning difficuties. Ian McKellen plays the older Walter who is the focus of the film. He works as a sweeper in a factory where he manages quite well despite the joshing from his workmates. A woman boss calls him a monkey. His father dies and his mother is left to look after Walter on her own. Even when he is a mature man she bathes him. She thinks of him as one of God's mistakes. 
After this father's death he is depressed but cannot explain why to his boss. Then he discovers his mother dead in her bed. He doesn't appear to realise she has died and leaves her there for weeks. When her body is discovered he is put in an institution. This is where the real horror starts. Forget those scary films set in disused insane asylums this is much worse. Walter is put in a huge dormitory with people of all kinds of disabilities who are treated in the most uncaring fashion. He is sexually attacked by another patient, the main carer works him brutally because he is more able than many of the other patients. Some patients are incapable of moving without aid, many have bandaged heads suggesting lobotomies. One is referred to as a vegetable.
The conditions in the institution are dreadful and the film is brutally frank right down to the soiled bums and sheets. This is not pleasant viewing and not unlike the conditions in Bulgarian orphanages of today.
McKellen's performance is superb. This film cannot be recommended too highly though one hopes all that it portrays has changed for the better.
Fortunately now available on DVD http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383046/