You know when you walk into a hotel doing the dance, find a urinal, wash your hands, see and speak to the teller at the desk, and everything works? That’s just because the architects did their homework following the Vitruvius man. You might be blasé about this fact until you stand in front of an Amsterdamer urinal tall enough to be a bathroom sink. Unfortunately, the pinnacle of bespoke for many of us will be a suit or a piece of furniture. A combination of ergonomics and economics means that our modern world is built around standardized, average metrics: desks 29″ tall to seats 17″ off the ground. If you are the wrong proportions from these averages, even if just by 10%, it is often a life of alterations or accommodation.
The Tallest Dwarf is not strictly about the challenges people with dwarfism face – although there is plenty of that, too. It is more accurately the filmmaker Julie Wyman’s journey with her parents and friends to determine whether she belongs as a dwarf, both medically and mentally. Given her parents, who might have graciously played along for the project, largely refused to admit this is even a possibility, Wyman keeps digging and reflecting on her own experiences, to see where she fits in.
Taking to the national organization Little People of America, she sifts through the fetishizing and patronizing examples from history and those still embedded in our consumerist culture. In the opposing corner, we see the corresponding explorations of museum and archive and culture specific to the community. There are differing opinions to dwarfism, within LPA. The dilemma and tug-o-war between often self-selected people who wish to live a different life, and the industry/biotech peddling treatments and surgery who wants to take them further than they may be comfortable with to extract money. There are clashes within the community on the fine lines between what should and should not be worked on. Throughout these explorations on the psyche of LPA as a community and individuals, there is little narration, and the stories pour out directly in an intermingle mass without set up.
Dance, gestures, and theater seems to fill the rest of the film as an metaphor for freedom. This is of course not unexpected. Most likely, the people central to Wyman’s lens are artists, actors, and dancers. But it also constructs a tone of less of pity and sympathy, and more of self-respect. I find the film refreshing in composition, and it’s never heavy as often befalls documentaries on “out of the bell curve” groups.
