Autism on Film: After Thomas

Several weeks ago, Jesse and I were scanning the paper in anticipation of an afternoon out, just the two of us. We thought we'd go see a movie, so I looked through the recent listings. "Look," I said, "the new Anthony Minghella movie. It's about..." and my voice trailed off as I got to the part about Robin Wright Penn and her "13-year-old autistic daughter, an aspiring gymnast." Not exactly the escapism we were looking for. But the truth is, I am oddly drawn to movies about, or featuring kids with, autism. I want to see what it's like for other people, even if those people are totally fictional. I want to know if we're past the Rain Man era, or if people still expect our kids to have photographic memories and run around saying "Ten minutes to Wapner" all the time. I want some perspective. Needless to say, we chose another movie that day, and isn't it ironic that I can remember the one we didn't go to, but not the one we did?

So it was with some trepidation that I sent the boys out for a walk last Saturday morning and watched After Thomas on BBC America. If you haven't heard of it, it's a British film about a child with autism who undergoes a remarkable transformation when he receives a pet dog, and it's supposed to be a true story. I'd seen a couple of reviews that said it was actually quite realistic and good, which I took with a grain of salt, not knowing if the reviewers would actually have any idea of what a real child with autism might look like.

But I have to tell you--the first part was scarily on target. It begins as the mother is taking her perhaps four-year-old son for a new pair of shoes. He screams through the whole proceeding, kicks the salesgirl repeatedly, provokes judgmental stares from the other mothers, and finally goes rigid and drops to the ground in the middle of a busy street. Been there, done that. Then once they get home, he kicks a closet door shut, accidentally locking his mother inside. I could feel her terror as she calls to him to open the door, knowing that he probably won't, and imagines what he may be up to while she's stuck inside. It was horrible, and very, very realistic.

There were other sensitively-handled parts as well: the strain on the parents, individually and collectively. The guilt and fatigue. The constant struggle with how much to push the child. Dealing with the feelings, and opinions, and sometimes harsh judgments, of others. But there are two main problems with films that depict autism. One is that there is no sense of elapsed time, so we don't know whether this child Kyle began to communicate weeks, or months, or even years after the introduction of the dog. We don't know how long it took for him to draw his first picture or interact meaningfully with his parents. The nature of film means that the action has to be telescoped. And let's face it: nobody wants to see a six-month-long film, no matter how touching, about a child who finally learns to try on a pair of shoes. So events have to be compressed for dramatic effect. Fair enough.

The other problem is that, when a child does something remarkable (in this case, says "Kyle loves Mummy," at the end), you have no way of knowing whether this actually happened, or was created for dramatic effect. Did the boy really say it spontaneously? Was it echolalic? Was it learned by rote? So as a parent, there's no way to pick apart the story to see what, as parents, we might learn. Should we all run out and get a dog? If we have a dog, should we add him to the list of therapists? Oh, and one more thing. Drama being what it is, there's a real pressure to make the first part as wrenching as possible, so that the eventual transformation has the maximum impact. But our experience is that the pain and pleasure are mixed, in varying strengths, pretty much every day.

I suppose if I have any grand conclusion about this film, it's that the first half would make an excellent training film for anyone who doesn't understand the experience of raising a child on the spectrum. And the second half was, well, heartwarming, but it reminded me again of the million unique circumstances and characteristics of each child, and how hard it is to universalize from that. So where do we go from here? I'll keep watching, thinking about this stuff, hoping to learn something, sharing what we're doing, and if we're lucky, something somewhere will ring a bell.

Comments

[John]

I'll second that review. After Thomas is excellent and at times very moving, but its always hard to know which bits are true and which are for dramatic effect. Our family are currently going through the process of a possible autism diagnosis for our son and my wife and I both found ourselves reassured that we aren't the only parents with these sorts of issues.

[drama mama]

Gotta check it out. Hmmm...is it on Netflix? Thanks for the tip!

[kristen]

I'm curious now, too. Hope it's a rentable title. Off to check blockbuster.com...

[mcewen]

Interesting. It's waiting on TIVO for me but I've not been brave enough to watch it yet. I tend to watch late at night so I don't want to go to bed with anything 'nasty' on my brain. So this is the second 'positive' review I've seen, so I'm feeling a bit braver now.
Best wishes

[Susan E]

Hi there. Well I checked Netflix and it's not there, but it is on the Amazon Web site in the UK already. So I suspect it'll be out on DVD here soon.