A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism: Review By harveycritic

A MOTHER'S COURAGE: Talking Back to Autism (Sólskinsdrengurinn)

First Run Features

Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed By: Fridrik Thor Fridriksson

Written By: Fridrik Thor Fridriksson

Cast: Kate Winslet, David G. Amaral, Simon Baron-Cohen, Geraldine Dawson, Temple Grandin, Joseph E. Morrow, Soma Mukhopadhyay, Portia Iverson, Jonathan Shestack

Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 9/14/10

Some doc*mentaries are national, even universal, catering to a wide variety of audiences. Michael Moore's are a good example, treating issues like the meltdown in Detroit, the shootings at Columbine, the health care crisis in America. Other docs are aimed at a more limited audience; at those families with special interests in narrower subject matter. "Sound and Fury" is an example, which considers the debate between the deaf who want to remain deaf, and the deaf who prefer to be helped by cochlear implants.

Fridrik Thor Fridiksson's "A Mother's Courage" is the latter type of story, virtually bereft of Michael Moore's irony and humor, dealing strictly with the autistic. This doc would be targeted principally to families coping with the one out of one hundred fifty people who are born with a range of the handicap, from the mildly autistic to those severely afflicted. What Fridriksson clears up right off is the difference between autism and Downs' Syndrome, the latter involving people who might cope better in society because of their ability to imitate the behavior of the mainstream.

The autistic people featured here are different from one another in several ways. Some of them are bright enough to get Ph.D. degrees and teach in universities. Dr. Temple Grandin is a good example: a professor of animal science at Colorado State who did not speak until she was three but in this film appears to make up for all that with long, tiresome monologues when she is not dealing with her collegiate duties or designing livestock handling equipment. Several specialists in autism include Dr. Catherine Lord who directs an autism center at the University of Michigan and Soma Mukhopadhyay, who gets lots of film time as director of education for Helping Autism Through Learning. Ms. Mikhopadhyay wears traditional Indian garb, sports a red dot on her forehead, and is shown working tirelessly to get autistic children to spell words-quite an achievement since these youngsters cannot speak and usually cannot focus.

The key person is a cute kid from Iceland whose parents must have money. Amid a soundtrack of tunes from Sigur Rós and Björk, the film hones in on Keli, the eleven-year-old son of Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir. Since Iceland lacks centers to treat the handicap, Keli and his parents traveled at least twice to the U.S. with filmmaker Jon Karl Helgason to doc*ment Keli's progress toward coping as a normal kid. With narration by Kate Winslet, who dubs the voices of the parents, the film shows how Keli, apparently a nice kid who doesn't cry or rebel, bonding with his principal teacher Soma Mukhopadhyay. Using the Rapid Prompting Method, the educator gets autistic children to become better at communication. There is no explanation of Keli's ability to use his pencil to poke at letters, spelling out words in English-even understanding the teacher, who speaks English to him as well. One wonders whether Keli's mom, possibly lingual only in Icelandic, could do the same.

Much of what we see in this film, which to me lacks much entertainment value but is, of course, a good resource for people whose own children are afflicted, is available on the web. The Wikipedia, for example, notes that autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication and by restricted and repetitive behavior. We do see how Keli waves a few twigs back and forth while he is being coaxed by Mukhopadhyay, how he focuses his attention on the ceiling rather than on the stencil with the letters.

Some people grow up to be afflicted with this non-curable problem but have exploited their problem by making great strides and contributing much to society. Examples given by the livestock professor include famous folks with Asperger Syndrome, which prevents them from empathizing with others, including (though this should be researched further) Albert Einstein, Wolfgang A. Mozart, and Thomas Jefferson.

This is not the first attempt to explicate the problems of autism. A recent film, Michel O. Scott's "The Horse Boy," took the audience to Mongolia where the Isaacson family believed their child could be cured by a shaman and by riding horses. Again, if you're going to have someone in the family with this problem, it pays to have money.

Unrated. 103 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online