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autism

The Reason I Jump – Inside Autism

January 8, 2021 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

Films have to ability to take us into unknown worlds—maybe through science fiction, or a setting in a different culture or time period. When I’m in a theater (ah, those were the days!) and the lights go down I feel a bit of excitement about where we will travel to today. The Reason I Jump, a documentary by Jerry Rothwell, tries to take us inside the world of autism. It’s probably an impossible goal to fully achieve, but it succeeds in giving us some understanding of what that world is like.

The film is based on book of the same title written by Naoki Higashida, when he was thirteen years old to try to explain what it was like for him to live with autism. Part of what makes this so impressive is that Naoki does not speak, yet he has written an amazingly elegant book to describe his life. Naoki does not appear in the film. He wanted his words to be enough.

The film uses his words to give us his insights—his way of experiencing the world that is so different from our own. It mixes these perceptions with glimpses into the lives of five people with autism, in India, the UK, the US, and Sierra Leone. Each of them is non-speaking. Yet we learn that they are not without thoughts and feelings. Between these glimpse Rothwell also includes shots of a young Japanese boy wandering various landscapes full of visual diversity.

The result is at times poetic (both verbally and visually) as well is eye-opening. We discover that as strange and challenging as the world of autism may seem to us, our world is just as strange and challenging to the people we meet. Early on, we hear Naoki’s words as he describes the difference in how he imagines we see things (first noticing the whole of an object and then the details), and how he experiences all the details and then must interpret that into the overall object. The film does a wonderful job of visualizing that difference.

For some people with autism who do not speak, it may be because they have so many words and thoughts in their mind that they have a hard time bringing order to them. For others it is just something that stands in the way of the words and the speaking. But all those we meet have words and ideas that they find ways of bringing forth—perhaps through art or by using an alphabet board to point letter by letter to form the words they cannot speak.

The film also touches a bit on the stigma that often accompanies autism. This is especially true when we meet the young woman in Sierra Leone. There (and elsewhere through the ages) people with autism were treated as possessed, witches, or sub-human. They have been locked away in institutions and even killed because of their differentness. The Reason I Jump helps us to understand autism as a very different understanding of reality that these people live in. And it allows us to hear what they cannot say.

The Reason I Jump is available on virtual cinema through local arthouses.

Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: autism, based on a book, documentary, Mental Health

Jack of the Red Hearts – Finding Self by Caring for Others

February 26, 2016 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

In Jack of the Red Hearts, a castoff from the foster system finds a place to belong through dishonesty, ending up with a sense of self, responsibility, and care for another person to move to a better life. Hmm. When I put it like that doesn’t it sound so bad. And to be fair, it has won awards at festivals. But it never quite worked for me even though thematically, it has a bit to commend it.

Jack (AnnaSophia Robb) has aged out of the foster care system, but her sister, whom Jack calls Coke, is still in the system. Jack hatches a plan to get enough money to get a place to live and “rescue” Coke. With a bit of identity theft, she cons her way into a job of caregiver for an autistic child, Glory. Obviously this is a job she has no qualifications for, but she manages to stumble through it. Glory’s mother Kay (Famke Jannsen) sees in Jack (whom she knows as Donna) as a substitute daughter that she can talk to and relate to. Glory’s teenage brother Robert (Israel Broussard) has a crush on Jack, thinking she is older than she is. Eventually, of course, the truth will come out with feelings of betrayal. But can Jack save the day by getting Glory into a special school? There is a strong Lifetime Channel vibe to the film, which some people appreciate.

I should start with the things that didn’t work for me. (But I’ll go on to the parts I find valuable.) It really is a bit implausible for Jack to have any ability to connect to Glory, especially since her sole training is watching The Miracle Worker after Robert suggests she’s acting like Anne Sullivan with Helen Keller. I wondered how many times of Glory getting lost it would take before Jack knew she had to keep an eye on her. That everything manages to go well for as long as it does really does strain credulity.

However, the film also has a strong emphasis on the healing that can come by opening oneself to others. Jack’s whole world is self. Even her attachment to her sister really is just an extension of her understanding of who she is. That is why she refers to herself and her sister as Jack and Coke—a mixture in which both sides compliment the other to create a whole. She only begins to grow as a person when she begins to connect to Glory and her family. I don’t think it is incidental that Glory is autistic—a range of disorders in which people cannot relate to other people in various ways. Jack enters the relationship without caring for anyone other than herself and her extension Coke. Just as she learns to pay attention to the needs of Glory, she also learns that by serving another she serves herself. That plays itself out in her other relationships as well, even with Coke who may well be better off, at least for now, with a family that cares for her. Although things look very bad for Jack at films end, they also seem very hopeful because of the changes that have happened within her.

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: AnnaSophia Robb, autism, foster care

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