This is a film review The Black Balloon
Or I copied and pasted the film review down here:
Think of autism on the screen and inevitably the figure of Dustin Hoffman's Raymond from Rain Man shambles into view, frustrating those around him with his inability to communicate yet astonishing them, too, with his gift for plucking arcane statistics out of the air. Emotionally handicapped he may be but intellectually, he's a magician.
There's a certain romance in the idea, especially when Tom Cruise, cast as Raymond's conman brother, takes him to Las Vegas, where Raymond's talent for figures starts winning them a fortune.
But Rain Man came out of Hollywood and The Black Balloon was made right here in Sydney. From that fact alone, you may have guessed that it gives a much earthier view of the autistic. Charlie Mollison (Luke Ford) has no gifts as an idiot savant. Instead of startling his family with the things he knows, he chooses not to talk and his autism is complicated by ADHD. But he has a great lust for life - as his 16-year-old brother, Thomas (Rhys Wakefield), knows only too well. Charlie's exuberance is the cross that Thomas has to bear. Strangers do not understand when he spends hours amusing himself by banging a pot with a wooden spoon or when he turns on a tantrum in a supermarket. And the Mollisons meet lots of strangers. They're an army family and every time that Thomas's father, Simon (Erik Thomson), is given a new posting, Thomas has to adjust to another set of schoolmates and Charlie and his problems have to be explained all over again.
Writer-director Elissa Down makes extraordinarily light work of this. The script is drawn from her own experiences growing up with two autistic brothers, one of whom suffered ADHD in common with Charlie. And every scene is enriched by the perspective gained when total recall is amplified by a reflectiveness grown out of time and distance. The film is a tender portrait of love under pressure. It's also illuminated by the kind of helpless laughter that can save the day when things are at their most desperate.
To prepare her production designer, Nick McCallum, for what he was getting into, Down took him to her parents' house which, she says, he pretty well reproduced on set. The Mollisons are moving in when we first meet them and they quickly set about arranging their individual collections of clutter to achieve a state of cheerful disarray. It all rings true except for the teddy bear cherished by Simon, an otherwise well-adjusted adult who adores his family and believes that a man's humanity depends on his willingness to look after his own. His wife, Maggie (Toni Collette), doesn't need a guiding principle. Her love for Charlie is unconditional. Collette gives us a big-hearted, easygoing woman who finds joy in managing her son in all his moods and if the neighbours can't handle that, it's too bad. Charlie is her vocation - which can be tough on Thomas, who has to chase him when he runs off down the street, wearing nothing but his underpants and his much loved hat with the mouse ears.
Worse, he has a habit of running into other people's houses and using their lavatories. Jackie (Gemma Ward), who happens to be one of Thomas's new classmates, is taking a shower when Charlie barges into her bathroom, closely followed by his blushing brother. It's a bad moment yet from this unpromising beginning, she and Thomas become attracted to one another - something made credible by Rhys Wakefield's performance, with its convincing combination of gawkiness and hard-won maturity. Thomas always looks as if he's wearing the wrong clothes but he has a confident voice that he'll eventually grow into and his resentment of Charlie is tempered by his sweet nature and abundant common sense.
The plot works as a series of vignettes, craftily balanced to leaven the embarrassments and exhaustion of seeing Charlie through his day with the story of Thomas and Jackie's tentative romance. Smarter than most of the other kids they know, they find comfort, as well as excitement, in being together and the enchantment which accompanies their discovery of one another is reflected in Denson Baker's cinematography, which softens the sun-baked flatness of suburban Sydney in summer with long shadows and a clear, shimmering light.
As Charlie, Ford is remarkable. The stiffness brought on by autism afflicts everything but his face, which is governed by emotional extremes. It's either screwed up in an expression of unqualified delight or it's consumed with deep despair and uncontrollable anger. He knows nothing in between, which means that the rest of the family have to be prepared for anything. Life with Charlie is a roller-coaster. If Thomas survives it - and he will - you feel that he'll be able to achieve anything he wants. Clearly, Down knows all about that. It's a film that comes from the heart.
29 Mar 2008, 5:30 pm
