Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
If children with serious disabilities are ignored, then adults with serious disabilities are practically invisible. It’s that chilling meeting point — the intersection between childhood and adulthood — that Best and Most Beautiful Things explores through its subject, Michelle Smith. The documentary follows Smith, a woman who is legally blind and who has Asperger’s syndrome, through her early 20s. The documentary chronicles in clear detail how hard it is for Smith to fit in with the world around her and how she finds community in the least likely of places.
Directed by Garrett Zevgetis, Best and Most Beautiful Things is indisputably Smith’s story and fight against invisibility. Filmed over the course of several years, the documentary starts with interviews with family and friends as Smith stands perched on the edge of adulthood. The film beginning is sad one cloaked with frustration as it details the many ways Smith longs to be independent but can’t. Specifically, watching Smith’s mother fret over how her daughter will find a job is a stressful moment that reveals one dark thread in the vast web of complexities that compose being a seriously disabled person in America. However, when Smith is presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity, things take a turn for the hopeful.
As The New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger’s review notes, Best and Most Beautiful Things certainly isn’t a Lifetime movie. Smith does end up finding a community that supports her, accepts her, and allows her to be herself. However, that supportive group of people come in the form of the kink and BDSM communities. That’s the beauty of this documentary and Smith as a subject. Through every turn, Best and Most Beautiful Things calmly highlights the goodness of people and groups that are all too often invisible to mainstream culture.
Smith’s worlds are departures from what we so often see in mainstream culture, but they fit together perfectly because they’re being bound by such a compelling central figure. In one scene, Smith laments about how people on the street participate in what her friend refers to as “non-consensual ageplay.” Smith is referring to how strangers will often talk down to her or treat her as a child once they learn she’s blind. But that term borrowed for the kink community — “non-consensual ageplay” — is such a smart and concise explanation of everything wrong and frustrating with this treatment, it fits perfectly despite its atypical roots.
Though is has a slow start, by its end, Best and Most Beautiful Things blossoms into an inspiring documentary about self-acceptance and the importance of community. It’s a quietly bold documentary that happily constructs its own messy narrative, much like its subject.
