Charlie Babbett (Tom Cruise), a greedy, money-driven yuppy, finds out one day that his estranged father is dead. Charlie is furious to discover that his father has left the $3 million estate to an unnamed beneficiary. After a little investigation, Charlie discovers that the beneficiary is a long-lost autistic brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), of whom Charlie has no memory. Charlie plots to steal Raymond away, and use him to find some way to access half or all of the $3 million he believes he should have…
Doug says...
I’ve never actually seen Rain Man before, but I’m obviously aware of what it’s about. It’s one of those films that has somehow seeped into the general consciousness. We all know it’s about autism - and more specifically, a savant - that is to say, someone with genius tendencies. It’s lampooned, mocked, and satirised constantly even today - and that is usually the mark of something that was groundbreaking.
Because just as now people challenge and attack Germaine Greer (rightfully so at points I should add), they are doing so on foundations of feminism that she herself helped to lay. It’s easy to attack the forbears of a movement that has since developed, and may have become troublesome, but it’s not fair to wipe away their initial achievements.
So it is with Greer, and so it is here. Rain Man by modern standards is somewhat problematic; casting an autistic person as an otherworldly figure. Raymond is a genius, set apart, unable to interact with the world and yet his extraordinary talents shine out. It’s not an accurate portrait of autism, certainly many autistic people are actually quite ordinary. And the film has come under many attacks for this over the past decades.
But I don’t think it’s entirely fair. This is the first time in this Oscars project that we’ve seen something like autism taken on and explored so thoroughly. Hoffman gives easily the best of his three performances that we’ve seen. It’s monotonous, rambling, repetitive and at times excruciating, but such is Hoffman’s craft that we see glimmers of feeling and of desire to partake in the world. He must watch certain television programmes at certain times, and he notes down whenever he feels he has been attacked in different coloured notepads (the colour equating to the severity) - but he also is attracted to a woman at a Vegas bar, and is noticeably eager to meet her again.
Hoffman is matched, note for note, by an surprisingly impressive Tom Cruise. It’s so strange to see an actor who is again lampooned and mocked mercilessly actually be good. We share his frustrations with his brother, and in a very simple but effective scene, we see his overwhelming guilt and sorrow when he realises it’s his own birth that made their nervous parents lock his unstable older brother away.
It’s a lovely film, and while I can see the problems, I’d also argue it works hard to put a face to the issue, and humanise autistic people to an audience who (in the 1980s) can’t have been all that sympathetic. Hoffman and Cruise match each other in performances which means, while it feels a little light, it’s an entirely gripping film, and we are willing Charlie to make effort to understand and engage with the isolated Raymond - making a final scene with some maple syrup actually very affecting.
Highlight
I loved the moment when Charlie’s girlfriend (the excellent Valeria Golino) pauses the Vegas lift, having seen Raymond’s sadness at being stood up. She coerces him to dance instead with her - and the slow, awkward dance in a lift becomes a quite beautiful moment; people helping and supporting each other and working out how to co-exist. Which is, I suppose, the moral of the whole film.
Lowlight
There isn’t much, but I would have loved more backstory - we know why he is Rain Man but I felt there were more stories to tell.
Mark
8/10
Paul says...
I’ve worked with autistic people, so Rain Man works for me on many levels. Most important to say, anyone who claims that Rain Man is not an accurate depiction of Autism is an imbecile. Granted, Autism is such a colossal topic full of theories, behaviours and research that you can never learn all there is to know through one fictional character. It would be like claiming to know everything about naval engineering after watching Titanic. But I can safely say that I have seen all the mannerisms, habits and likes and dislikes encapsulated within Raymond Babbett spread across several children and adults that I have cared for or volunteered with.
Working from these first-hand experiences, I think that what Rain Man captures so brilliantly is the irony of the main characters’ situation. Raymond is, ostensibly, the mechanical outsider. He is described as living in his own world; he can memorise the entire phone book; he is unresponsive to other people’s anger, frustration or sadness; his habits create barriers and delays endlessly. But the film shows us that his behaviour is incredibly human. He’s terrified of planes because of statistics he has read on air crashes; he loves to watch his favourite tv shows at the right time; he likes to drive because it brings back fond memories of his father’s driving lessons. If you were provided with these three facts, without the knowledge of Raymond’s autism, you’d think he was a pretty regular human being, wouldn’t you? Charlie, on the other hand, fits in well with '80s society. He’s ambitious, attractive, charismatic, affluent, well-dressed, driven, and his hair is excellent (in a “museum-piece” kind of way). But he’s totally inhuman- motivated entirely towards getting an inheritance he thinks he deserves, and utilises his brother’s mathematical prowess to win big in Vegas. Is it not a bit warped that Charlie can live the high life very easily, while Raymond must live in an institution, reliant on a family member paying the fees?
Raymond may not represent all autistic people, but the film certainly represents the contentious relationship between autistic people and the rest of the world. When Raymond stops walking on the pedestrian crossing because the sign changes to “don’t walk”, he is met with anger by drivers trying to get past. A similar situation occurred when an autistic man in my care got aggressively frustrated with a supermarket self-service machine and the shop assistant trying to help him. Even after apologising and explaining the situation, the shop assistant’s reply was “I’m not paid enough to deal with that”. So who’s the real “human” here- the one getting annoyed with a malfunctioning computer, or the one who, despite knowing the man’s condition, didn’t care?
All of these questions are illuminated by the outstanding central performances by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman- especially Hoffman who nabbed Best Actor for this. This is our third and final Hoffman movie in this project after Midnight Cowboy and Kramer Vs Kramer, each about 10 years apart, and in all of them he is entirely transformational. I’ve never been massively familiar with his work before, but now I can see that he is an actor who dedicates himself wholeheartedly to his performance, and changes naturally from role to role.
Not to nitpick too much, but the film sags slightly about two-thirds of the way through. I think this because the scenes between the two actors in which Raymond does something frustrating and Charlie gets frustrated, become increasingly repetitive and predictable. Plus there’s no real urgency or tension to the storyline. It’s character-driven, and that’s commendable, but it needed some kind of villain or threat to keep the momentum. Thankfully, these feelings of tedium are quickly dispelled when the brothers finally start to bond. The final third is tender and tasteful and provides an ending that is believable and realistic.
Coming at the end of a mediocre decade, Rain Man is a sigh of relief. It has the best sense of humour since 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the most heart since 1982’s Gandhi, and this is nice to see after a series of epics that have placed showiness over substance.
Highlight
Besides Dustin Hoffman’s entire performance, I loved one of the final scenes in which Charlie finally tells Raymond how much he appreciates his older brother, and the two touch foreheads for a while. It’s beautiful, and you will cry, dammit!
Lowlight
The two-way scenes between Hoffman and Cruise may be expertly acted and written, but as I said, I felt like they were “more of the same”. A quick re-write could eliminate these and keep the pace up.
Mark
8/10
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