Rain Man
The one thing most people associate with the movie “Rain Man”
is Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt. This to
such an extent that many, if not most, who has no direct relations with autism,
believe this is what it means to be autistic. I have a close relation on the
spectrum and therefore have experienced first hand how unfair that assumption
is. Raymond Babbitt is in my experience not a high functioning autistic but severely
disabled by it. For most high functioning autists, they appear almost normal
except their brains are wired differently and savant skills are quite rare,
usually it is simply an ability to totally focus on an issue. Sorry, just
needed to get that off my chest. What I actually meant to say here is that “Rain
Man” has other qualities that makes it very much a worthwhile watch.
Tom Cruise is Charlie Babbitt, a smartass car dealer who may
be a little too smart for his own good in his business dealings. In the opening
we see him importing expensive cars and trying to strongarm both clients and
creditors. When his father dies, he travels to the other end of the country
with his girlfriend, Susanna (Valeria Golino), to the funeral and the reading
of the will. Charlie was estranged from his father and is left with an old car
and some rosebushes while the rest, 3 million dollars, goes to a trust fund for
an undisclosed person. Charlie is furious and feels cheated out of his
inheritance. He traces down the trustee and so meets his older brother Raymond,
an autistic savant, who lives a protected life on a mental institution. Charlie
had no idea he had a brother.
Charlie cooks up a scheme to kidnap his brother to be
returned for half the inheritance and so leave the asylum with Raymond in the
car. Raymond is extremely tied to his rituals and has only limited contact with
the world around him. In some ways he is a child and Charlie who has no experience
with autism and no care for anybody but himself is quickly going crazy over
Raymond. Susanna is so disgusted with the way Charlie treats Raymond that she
leaves him. This leaves Charlie alone with Raymond on the long drive back to
Los Angeles.
This is where the core of the movie takes place. Somewhere between
Susanna leaving him and their arrival in Los Angeles Charlie develops a
relationship with his long-lost brother that changes him profoundly. This is
the magic of the movie. If you only had the scenes in hotel where Susanna is leaving
and those where Charlie is meeting Raymond’s doctor (Jerry Molen as Dr. Gerald
Bruner) and the court appointed doctor (Barry Levinson, the director, as Dr.
Marston) it would be entirely unbelievable to credit Chalie for becoming a
caring guardian of his brother. You need to see everything that takes place in
between. What starts as convenient acts to get thing going, like providing
Raymond with a portable television, becomes acts of genuinely caring for his
well being. Charlie gets to care for somebody else than himself.
Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor for his portrayal of the autistic
brother and while that is a convincing feat, I do think Tom Cruise is the one
who actually deserved the Oscar for making his transformation believable. It is
nothing short of stunning, maybe his best performance ever. The moment where
Charlie learns that the Rain Man he vaguely recalls from his childhood is
actually Raymond and that Raymond was sent away when he accidentally scalded
his younger brother is a gem, but really, it is a process they go through and
that is so much harder to describe than a single, magically transformative
moment. When we see them together at the casino in Las Vegas the bonding is
almost complete and it is beautiful to watch.
“Rain Man” was the big winner in a very strong year. It was
nominated in eight categories and won four of them. Beside Best Actor it won
Best Picture, Best Director (Barry Levinson) and Best original screenplay. With
very strong competition, this was only possible because we got to believe in
the bromance and the character development. The movie hinges on that.
I like “Rain Man” despite stigmatizing autism, but then
again, Raymond is a hero and how many autistic heroes are there in the movies?
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