This was just a blind spot for me. I know someone with Tourette Syndrome, but their tic was a small biting motion that was much easier to hide. Most of my experiences with Tourettes were through the early YouTube clips of this guy, who made me and my friends laugh. Not once did I consider what life would be like having to live day to day with this disease. Kirk Jones’s new film does exactly that, pointing out that those funny clips usually hide a person going through a hellscape they can never leave.
Until age 12 in the mid 1980s, John Davidson (Scott Ellis Watson) was just your run of the mill lad in Galashiels, Scotland. Starting junior high, John wants to be a good football player, and maybe find a girl to date while trying to get good grades, you know standard stuff. But right around that time, John starts developing these tics of screaming and spitting. Even worse, he throws out wild curses he can’t control either, not great for a new kid trying to keep a low profile. Tourette’s ends all John’s (adult played by Robert Aramayo) childhood dreams, leaving him stuck at home, caring for his exasperated mother Heather (Shirley Henderson) with nowhere to go. Except to an impromptu luncheon at an old school mate Murray Achenbach’s (Francesco Piacentini-Smith) house, where John tries mom Dottie’s (Maxine Peake) spaghetti bolognese. And, maybe, finds a light at the end of this dark, dark Tourettes filled tunnel he’s in.
I Swear is the perfect matching of place and story. If there’s one thing most people know about the UK, it’s their belief in dignity and order. Tourette’s says “fuck that” while flipping the bird, involuntarily of course. The first 30 minutes of I Swear shows us this is not some YouTube funny film or lifetime sap fest. It’s just an honest, heartbreaking look at how Tourette’s destroys a person outside in. Poor John little by little loses the things he loves because of this disease, breaking his dreams, and then his spirit. By the time Robert Aramayo shows up, John’s accepted his brokenness, adopting his mother Heather’s strategy of keeping his head down best he can out of shame. Kirk Jones does a great job showing how basic tenets of society are impossible for the man: going to the store we see all sorts of people just walk away from him, assuming he’s a crazy person. You feel the good heart John has, hoping, someone, anyone, will give him a chance to see who he is underneath basically the worst disease possible to thrive in British society. But like all those people who silently walk away, it’s best to just let this “problem” either “fix itself” or “learn some manners.” Robert Aramayo is nothing short of incredible here; I had to remind myself he’s acting because of how honest and human he makes Tourettes for the audience.
John’s sad life completely changes when Dottie offers him dinner. This is where the key lesson of I Swear shows up. You can’t cure Tourettes, but you can still help the person underneath it. Dottie sees John the person, and decides this is her distraction from her current health crisis (cancer), taking the Patch Adams approach to her patient unlike John’s scared, manners oriented mother. From then on, Kirk Jones starts lightening up the story, bit by bit. The writer/director goes for dark humor all over the place, like John playing a card game blurting out what his hand is. But with Dottie, he doesn’t have to apologize cause he can’t control it. Galashiels kind community center operator Tommy Trotter (Peter Mullan) witnesses John’s atrocious job interview, but also sees the sweetness underneath, discovering a great tea maker despite tic hitting Tommy’s dog during the interview. There’s still concerns: John has to discover new places where new people won’t understand that his “slut” comment isn’t really him. But it’s not all scary. For example, in a dance club, his Tourettes is drowned out by the dancing, nice! And a court sequence is made funnier as the stern judge can’t quite “repeat after him” in a way other people would. After the heartbreaking first half, each little victory John gets grows his confidence little by little, becoming a man before our eyes. And all done in a way that’s sweet, but not overly sappy, and not mockingly so either. Just, human.
That’s it. I Swear forever changed my outlook with someone with Tourettes. I can’t unsee what Kirk Jones and Robert Aramayo showed me here, and what real life John Davidson does day in and day out with a smile and a beautiful heart. It also should remind everyone to find the Dottie’s in your life, selflessly propping up others because it’s the right thing to do. When it comes to soceital order, they’re the ones that make the damn thing run, remember that.