Life, Animated

I’m not usually prone to crying over movies, but I’m glad I screened this one at home because I bawled like a baby through about half of Life, Animated. It’s not that the film is particularly sad — in fact, it’s equally as uplifting as it is heart-wrenching — my problem was that it’s all too familiar. Ken Hanke always insisted (often to my chagrin) that my reviews should be personal. So, at the risk of digressing from the discussion of the film for a moment, I should disclose my inherent bias in this case. I helped raise an ex-girlfriend’s autistic son from the time he was five until I moved back home to Asheville when he was nine. (With the benefit of retrospection, “helped” may be too strong a term, but I did the best I could.) His name is Timmy. Much like Owen Suskind, the subject of this documentary, Timmy couldn’t speak. As a writer, I initially found it almost unmanageably difficult to relate to him without the benefit of language (I’m far too fond of hiding my feelings behind words), but Timmy found a way of getting around my intellectual inflexibility. As I got to know him, I learned more from him about how to effectively communicate emotions than I had in my entire academic tenure studying screenwriting. I knew next to nothing about this film going in, but I cracked when I heard Owen’s father, a journalist and author, talking about his son’s sudden inability to communicate. Owen’s diagnosis is not mentioned immediately, but my memories came flooding back as soon as his family started describing his symptoms, and I knew what this film was likely to be. Needless to say, this was a tough movie for me to watch, and an even tougher one to talk about.

That being said, I think this is a very important film, both for those of us whose lives have been touched by autism and for those who just want to understand the obstacles that autistic people and their families struggle valiantly to overcome. The documentary, based on a book by Owen’s father Ron Suskind, follows Owen, now in his 20s, as he is confronted with the difficult transition into adulthood and independence. The film’s nominal hook is that Owen eventually developed language skills through the repetitive viewing of Disney animated films. While this aspect of the story is prominent, it’s framed as part of a broader context, and the shadow of the mouse does not loom as large as I had feared.

As sad as it is to listen to Owen’s parents talking about their son’s descent into the cage of autism, it’s also profoundly uplifting to hear them describe the first time he was able to communicate with them again — through memorized lines of Disney dialogue — and to see the man that Owen grew up to be. The film’s structure abandons the typical talking-head format to focus exclusively on Owen, with the camera following closely but never obtrusively. The documentarians are ethical to a fault, abstaining judiciously from insinuating themselves into his world. It’s hard to watch Owen searching for his medication on his first night alone in his new assisted-living apartment without wanting to scream to the camera operator to just help him already. But, when he finds the pills on his own, you know it was the right call. And the objective distance the filmmakers maintain leads to some genuinely tense moments, such as when Owen’s move is delayed by the search for a Mickey Mouse charm his girlfriend gave him. Lest this make the film sound cold, the filmmakers go to great lengths to present Owen and his family sympathetically, demonstrating a clear affection for their subjects without becoming saccharine or maudlin. Listening to Owen’s parents and older brother recount their hopes and fears for his future is never anything less than moving and relatable, and the filmmakers masterfully stay out of the way, letting their subjects’ story occupy the sole focal point of the film.

So, would Life, Animated have been my first five-star review were it not for my personal bias? Probably not, but it wouldn’t have missed the mark by much. As a documentary, it’s expertly crafted, slickly produced and staggeringly effective. I defy anyone to sit through this film without having a few emotional moments. Timmy, the boy I knew, is still nonverbal — and his obsession was Blue’s Clues, instead of Disney animation — but watching this film reawakened a hope in me that he might one day break out of the prison of his brain. I always knew, on a strictly intellectual level at least, that this was a possibility. But watching Life, Animated was the first time that possibility became viscerally real in my mind. One of my greatest regrets in life has been my failure to do more for Timmy, and this film made me feel a little more optimistic about his fate. If that’s not worth the price of admission, I don’t know what is. Rated PG for thematic elements and language.

Opens Friday at Grail Moviehouse