Rain Man movie good or bad for us?

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I am on the fence about this one but I would be very interested read others opinions.

One thing it does have a great soundtrack.

Bad IMO - from my own experience that's what I thought autism was up until very recently, and from what I can tell the majority of the population still think that.

rainman sgood movie

defnally good

I have to agree with that.

However I have noticed my long term memory is way better then anybody I know my short term memory is rubbish.

The rain man movie got this across in a very exaggerated way with Dustin remembering the phone book.

I explained my Autism to a co worker and his first reply was the like in the Rain Man movie.

Awesome movie.

As for it being "realistic", Lorna Wing uses Rain Man as an example of the aloof subtype of HFA/AS (Lorna Wing being the person who "invented" Asperger's in the West). You can't argue with that.

As for the odd and eccentric end (the milder end of HFA/AS), she uses Sherlock Holmes as an example (the books).

Its a Hollywood movie with Tom Cruise...
Before its time, so flew under the radar a bit

Would have been good if there was a scene where he meets another sort of geeky guy who kidnaps him and they go gaming together or Hoffmans character gets to relax and laugh with his own kind of people.

But I did like it a lot 20 years ago

It was good, now it's out of date.

When I first saw it I didn't know about AS. I thought the portrayal by Dustin Hoffman was 'over the top' and not sympathetic at all. I've seen it since, and my feelings have reversed. I felt like Tom Cruise was a complete jerk. He was impatient and never sympathetic at all. It's one of the few movies that have had that effect on me.

You have to remember too:

Imagine a person who's used to the routine of a facility, having his own room and life revolved around said facility, and it's all suddenly thrown out the window (where autistic individuals live to a routine, and how much they need it is often defined by how severe they are; we can all say Rain Man was on the severe end of HFA/AS).

I'm surprised "Rain Man" actually functions as well as he does in the film. I know I couldn't do what he did, traveling across country, going to different towns, eating in strange restaurants, being around so many people so many times....

Unfortunately, we live in a society where somebody with severe/low-functioning autism will be considered the benchmark for those with AS/low-functioning autism. So, overall, I think it is bad.

It doesn't give a realistic picture of autism at all. I work as a guard/assistant/driver at a sheltered housing (my colleagues don't know about my diagnosis) and the inhabitants in this housing with autism are all better functioning than Rain Man, even though they all have varying degrees of mental retardation and none of them are what you'd consider "high-functioning".

The people who live there mainly do their cleaning, food preparing, work in a sheltered workshop and all that themselves, but may need help with tasks such as making a healthy dinner, the can't drive themselves, they have problems applying knowledge, they need help organizing money and so on. They still have a basic vocabulary, they understand that two dollars is twice as much as one dollar, they don't stim much apart from pacing, and if you were to put them on a plane, they probably wouldn't beat themselves in the head while screaming.

The difference between Asperger's and HFA isn't that big, but the difference between autism with retardation and autism without is huge. A problem is that the distinction between AS and HFA is exclusively based on whether they spoke before the age of 3 or not.

Someone who learned to speak at the age of four can be higher functioning than someone who spoke at the age of two. When it comes to Asperger's, who's "mild" and who's not often depends on external factors.

An Asperger's child (even if his AS is "mild") who's taken out of regular school to be homeschooled or sent to a special school in most cases won't be high-functioning. Someone who learns to cope with the world around him and gets the same opportunities of everyone else more often than not will be. A perfect evidence of the latter would be many of the people on this board; many hold degrees, have children, exercise, are in relationships, work and are "almost" normal.

To broaden it out a little.. what about Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory (who is admittedly a caricature rather than explicitly defined as having autism) or Gary in Alphas.

Kurgan,

So you're going to dispute Lorna Wing's claim that he's a good presentation of the aloof kind of HFA? She is the one who "made" Asperger's after all. "High-functioning" doesn't mean that the person is actually "high-functioning" in society, it means that they're "high-functioning" compared to people who can't often communicate and require constant care. Rain Man could communicate and he didn't need constant care.

You'll also want to note that the character in Rain Man is actually based on several individuals with autism* (only the special abilities are based on the "real" Rain Man"); this is by the psychiatrist who worked on the film.

*One of the members of this very forum has met one of these individuals too.

I don't know any idiot savants. Do you?

If only 1 of every 10 autistic persons is an idiot savant, then there are fewer of them than us Aspies.

And if only 50 percent of idiot savants are autistic, with the other 50 percent having other psychological disorders or mental illnesses, then there are even fewer of them than us Aspies.

So how much like Aspies is "Rain Man" -- the celluloid or the one on whom the character was based (and who apparently was born with a rare genetic syndrome)?

Well, he was annoying as heck. Definitely an Aspie-like trait.

Good point. Never met one. Knew a bloke in school who was gifted with the ability to do high level mathematics, but he wasn't a savant. I've wished I had any ability of this sort, frankly I have to have my keys colour coded to remember which one is for what.

I knew someone in real life who reminded me of Rain Man. Their behaviours were uncannily similar - the strict routine, the stimming, the razor sharp memory, etc. This was in a nursing home. He was fun to be with though, but his stubbornness drove the staff crazy. He ate once a day - dinner. Around 5pm the kitchen would send up his meal - 12 slices of bread, 3 bowls of apple sauce, 3 bowls of borsht, 3 bowls of lettuce, 3 glasses of milk. He'd procrastinate and procrastinate and finally emerge from his room around 9pm to walk to the dining room on the same floor to eat. The stroll from his room to the dining room takes seconds, but for him, it'd take about 2 hours. When he did start eating, and making a mess doing because he ate standing up, it'd take him about 2 hours. The nursing home tried to put a stop to his unusual pattern, but he used to scream and hit his head so they just figured leave him be. He was a funny guy. His health took a severe beating because of his quirks, but what can you do? That's autism.