Isabelle from "Mozart and the Whale"

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Hi everybody, I just watched the movie "Mozart and the Whale". I thought Josh Hartnett's acting/portrayal of AS was decent, while Rada on the other hand appeared more unrealistic. Her abrupt laugh "HAH!" I found really grating/fake. And if she was scared of clanging metal, she should've ran away instead of freak out. She appeared manipulative and ungrateful as well in the relationship. It's generally harder for AS people to be in romantic relationships, so I'm surprised she'd even act suicidal.

Does anybody feel the same way about Rada (Mozart)'s character?

no, i found her credible and three dimensional, wheras the guy was just a hollow cliche, the maths/counting stuff was overdone.

I have not read the book. But in the movie I found them both belivable. However I was put off by isabblle's laugh and smoking. Because of those things I did not like the character.

I liked Isabelle a lot. You see, few AS women are portrayed in the media. Our overall presentation is very different from men. She showed us something that seems atypical, but that is more often than not present in AS women.

The book makes it clear that Mary Newport (the woman upon whom the character of Isabelle was based) also has PTSD, which probably accounts for her meltdown at the sound of clanging metal. In the movie, she explains that she had been raped, but the book goes into much greater detail about the abusive relationships she had been in.

The thing I really liked about the movie, was that they really seemed to have made an effort to show how broad the autistic spectrum really is. How boring would it have been if all the Aspies displayed exactly the same set of characteristics? I really enjoyed all the scenes with the support group - without them, the movie would have been lacking an important dimension - and a context in which to view how both the main characters could have AS, yet be so different.

I think isabelle is the most believable, donald is too stereotypical with the whole maths things, he's like a walking DSM.

I thought she was pretty accurate.

She could have been accurate, but I did not like the film. It did not feel good.

I went on youtube and watched it, and i thought it was pretty good! I don't claim to be an expert or anything, but from what i've studied about AS they both seem a bit exaggerated... But that might have been just to highlight their difficulties. At least they both had symptoms that kind of appeared differently from one-another, instead of them both completely being walking stereotypes with no individual qualities. I could relate a lot to some of the little quirks they both had, though. They both had lots of animals(Donald had all those birds!), and i have a bunch of reptiles(that i talk to often!) and i love animals. I also like to mock animal noises and stuff like Isabelle was doing in that one part. Then, just the way Donald kind of seemed when he got nervous, shifting his weight from side to side, fiddling with his keys, is exactly the way i act when i get frustrated or nervous. So, yeah, all in all i thought it was a cool movie i could relate to Except for the being in a relationship part

Yeah, she wasn't that good of an actor and should be replaced with someone else

I think in a strange way that different people can relate to different characters, which I guess is one of the peculiar things about diversity.

Her character was incredibly annoying, but the only one in that bomb to have any real depth. Everyone else was a stereotype.

Ron Bass (screenwriter... also wrote Rain Main) needs to stay away from the spectrum. He's not the emperor of it. Everyone in that film was such a damned cliche. Oh, so they're ALL savants? (like the guy who stole the freaked out redheads cookie and then went and played the piano).

I really, really hated the film. THe worst part was it was recommended to me by someone who was basically like "if you're not like these people, then you're not autistic"

I'm nothing like any of those characters because they strike me as such exaggerations.