Rain Man was a critically acclaimed movie when it came out in 1988. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, and Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor. It was a good road trip story and was the first major film to deal with autism explicitly. Though well-liked when released, Rain Man has gotten negative attention in recent years due to its questionable portrayal of autism.

The film tells the story of a yuppie named Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) who goes to his father’s funeral in Ohio and does not understand why he is not getting the 3 million dollar inheritance. Instead, his institutionalized autistic savant brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), whom Charlie did not know existed, is the heir to the $3 million.

Despite Raymond’s brilliant math and trivia skills, he does not understand the concept of money, so Charlie decides to take him to his lawyer in Los Angeles to resolve the inheritance issue. The challenge with that is Raymond is unwilling to fly in an airplane. As such, they had to drive to Los Angeles in the 1949 Buick Convertible, the only thing Charlie inherited. While on the trip, Raymond presents various autistic traits, including needing to be in bed by a specific time, watching all his favorite TV shows, and needing his food to be a certain way. The road trip allowed for much bonding time and learning about one another.

The part about autistic people needing things to be a certain way in the movie hit entirely on the spot. As a child, I also needed my food to be a certain way, refused to go to bed early, and had to be home by a specific time to watch my favorite TV shows. Though I am less like that as an adult, I still have some solid prohibitions and aversions. I will, for example, jump on top of someone’s car if that is the only way to prevent a dog from licking me. Similarly, Raymond insists they go into a farmhouse and force the family to watch Judge Wapner on TV.

Raymond’s math skills were a bit unrealistic. As a person on the spectrum, I was regularly given the “Rain Man Treatment” and asked complex math questions, such as the square roots of four-digit numbers. I often get them to two places after the decimal and three on rare occasions. However, his ability to get it to eight places after the decimal seems unrealistic, even for savants (except maybe the most brilliant). It also seems unrealistic to count toothpicks by groups of 82, especially if he did not already know the number of toothpicks on the floor was a multiple of 82. Lastly, while Raymond could memorize many names and phone numbers, it’s unrealistic that he could do it for everyone from A to G in a large phone book. These extravagant idiosyncrasies indeed were for a dramatic effect.

The issue is describing Rain Man as “high-functioning,” a controversial term, is flawed. Raymond is only “high-functioning” in his math and trivia abilities. In every other aspect of his life, he appears to have an intellectual disability and is limited in his functioning and performing those life skills independently. Raymond is not indicative of someone who is “high-functioning” with autism and ignores the fact that most “high-functioning” people can live on their own, know how to get by, and have above-average intelligence all around.

Despite the film’s portrayal of “high-functioning” autism, Rain Man was a good story. Dustin Hoffman did a great acting job as an autistic person. Some people might say this was an inaccurate depiction of autism, but there is no such thing as an accurate depiction of autism- every autistic person is different.

It was the first major film to focus on autism. While it was not the first film about the subject, it was the first to get a lot of attention and helped broaden the public’s understanding of autism. Though stereotyped, as more information about autism became available, the public had a broader understanding of autistic people. In my opinion, that’s a win-win.

References

Levinson, Barry, director. Rain Man. United Artists, 1988

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