Elizabeth Day,
The Observer
On the face of
it, Dylan Redford has everything going for him—he is a handsome, intelligent
and artistic 22-year-old who happens to be the grandson of Robert Redford. But
he is also severely dyslexic and, at the age of 10, could barely read or write.
At school in
Marin County, California, he found it impossible to use the lockers. The
combination of remembering a sequence of numbers and then twisting the padlock
dial in the right direction proved difficult to master. “It was just all bad,”
says Dylan. “I had to ask my friends to do it for me.”
Dylan’s
experiences with dyslexia are depicted in a new documentary, The Big Picture,
directed by Dylan’s father, James. After watching his “intellectually curious”
son struggle with dyslexia throughout much of his childhood, James Redford, the
eldest surviving child of Robert, says his ambition was simple. He wanted “to
make the movie I wish my family could have seen”.
The Big
Picture, which is released in the UK later this month after garnering critical
acclaim in the US, follows the stories of several dyslexics of different ages,
including Dylan, and examines how people with the condition cope from a young
age right through to adulthood.
Among the
interviewees are successful lawyers, bankers and chief executives. Sir Richard
Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, talks candidly on camera about his
own dyslexia, admitting that someone once had to explain to him the difference
between “gross” and “net” profit after a board meeting.
"One in
five human beings walking around currently on this planet are dyslexic,"
says Redford, talking to the Observer by phone from his home in Marin County.
"It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from, it affects every
single corner of the globe. How many other things are there that affect that
many people that are still so misunderstood?"
Dyslexia is a
persistent condition consisting of a combination of abilities and difficulties
that can affect the learning process in reading, spelling and writing.
According to the Dyslexia Research Trust, 10% of children from all social
groups have dyslexia—that represents approximately 750,000 in the UK—and it is
the most common cause of childhood loss of confidence, sometimes leading to
frustration, depression and even suicide.
Yet the
condition is still shrouded in mystery. When Dylan was a child, his parents
“felt under fire all the time with misinformation”. They encountered teachers
who did not know how to deal with their son and people who assumed it was a
“made-up” illness that children could grow out of.
"You get a
mournful glance from someone who says, ‘So, will they be living with you for
the rest of your life?’?" Redford says. "Or, ‘I’m so sorry. Do you
plan to have more children?’ It’s just crazy. That was part of the frustration
and it drove me to tell the story as it really is."
Once Dylan was
officially diagnosed, he started to thrive and won a place to study at Middlebury
College, a prestigious liberal arts university in Vermont. Redford says that
his son, like many dyslexics, is “a big-picture thinker” who can come up with
creative solutions to problems but that mainstream schooling in the US and the
UK fails to recognise this.
Branson says
that when he left school at the age of 15, his headmaster told him: “You’re
either going to go to prison or you’re going to become a millionaire.”
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