There's nothing much new in the movies about photographic memories. We've seen them in "It's Always Fair Weather" and "Operation Madball," among others. It all depends on the use to which they're put, and "Rain Man" puts a photographic memory to pretty good use.
Tom Cruise is a selfish expensive Los Angeles car dealer who is in a financial hole. He doesn't blink when his estranged millionaire father dies back in Cincinnati. He blinks when he discovers that he's inherited nothing but an old specimen of a Buick convertible and some rose bushes, the remainder of the fortune being put in a trust for the autistic brother, Dustin Hoffman, that Cruise never knew he'd had.
Hoffman is sequestered in a local institution where he's safe. Cruise, determined to somehow get his hands on all that moolah, kidnaps Hoffman and drives him across the country in that Buick, accompanied by Cruise's girl friend, Valeria Golino.
It becomes a mismatched buddy comedy. Hoffman is a pain in the neck, always talking to himself, demanding his obsessions be met regarding food, clothing, and scheduling. Hoffman can't stand to be touched and is unable to look anyone directly in the eye. If Cruise were capable of feeling shame, he'd be ashamed to take Hoffman out in public, but in fact Cruise is so shallow that all he feels is irritation and anger. Golino is so disgusted by Cruise's self absorption that she leaves him flat somewhere along the secondary roads, leaving us with two very self-aborbed men.
Things pick up when Cruise realizes that Hoffman is not a garden variety autistic but a savant. He has an extraordinary memory for details. He memorizes half a phone book in a few hours. He can remember anything, as few people can and few autistics. Eidetic imagery, the fancy name for photographic memory, is real enough. You can show somebody a comb for a few seconds and he can tell you how many teeth there are. But it's most common in children and fades with age. At any rate, Cruise forgets all about memorizing phone books and teaches Hoffman how to count cards at a Las Vegas casino. They make more than eighty large before being thrown out of town -- enough to save Cruise's big car business.
A movie like this, with two people who are alien to one another but are thrown together by circumstances, has to be handled delicately because everyone already knows that, by the end, the two of them will have bonded emotionally. In a movie like "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray's conversion to humanity is done very well indeed. Here, the transition is a bit contrived. What apparently landed Hoffman in the institution was that he was handling Cruise as a baby and accidentally dropped him in a tub of hot water. This is supposed to be a Big Reveal and our eyes are supposed to tear up. And at the final conference, which will determine Hoffman's fate, the two brothers are left alone for a few minutes and Hoffman leans his head against Cruise's and -- sob. The scene is meaningful in the worst sense. Fortunately, it doesn't end with Hoffman's being "cured" and dancing in the streets. Instead he's packed off back to the farm where Cruise promises to visit him. That's a mature sort of ending.
Hoffman evidently put a lot of effort into learning how to act like an autistic and it pays off. Cruise is lightweight, adequate, and handsome. The Italian inflections that inform Golino's speech are exquisite. It's like listening to an Italian movie in which the phonemes almost accidentally form English words.
I hope the movie doesn't leave anyone with the impression that autistics are all savants because it's far from the truth. Nobody knows what causes it but it's present at birth. An autistic baby is quiet and doesn't care if you pick him up and hug him or not. They're fascinated by glittering objects. (Hoffman says of a Vegas hooker, "She sparkles.") They tend to repeat rhythmic movements such as banging their heads lightly against the wall. And autism is at one end of a continuum, while at the other end is childhood schizophrenia. It's a curious disorder. Experienced observers comment that when you look at the eyes of an autistic child, though they don't respond to anything you do, you just KNOW there's intelligence there.
Tom Cruise is a selfish expensive Los Angeles car dealer who is in a financial hole. He doesn't blink when his estranged millionaire father dies back in Cincinnati. He blinks when he discovers that he's inherited nothing but an old specimen of a Buick convertible and some rose bushes, the remainder of the fortune being put in a trust for the autistic brother, Dustin Hoffman, that Cruise never knew he'd had.
Hoffman is sequestered in a local institution where he's safe. Cruise, determined to somehow get his hands on all that moolah, kidnaps Hoffman and drives him across the country in that Buick, accompanied by Cruise's girl friend, Valeria Golino.
It becomes a mismatched buddy comedy. Hoffman is a pain in the neck, always talking to himself, demanding his obsessions be met regarding food, clothing, and scheduling. Hoffman can't stand to be touched and is unable to look anyone directly in the eye. If Cruise were capable of feeling shame, he'd be ashamed to take Hoffman out in public, but in fact Cruise is so shallow that all he feels is irritation and anger. Golino is so disgusted by Cruise's self absorption that she leaves him flat somewhere along the secondary roads, leaving us with two very self-aborbed men.
Things pick up when Cruise realizes that Hoffman is not a garden variety autistic but a savant. He has an extraordinary memory for details. He memorizes half a phone book in a few hours. He can remember anything, as few people can and few autistics. Eidetic imagery, the fancy name for photographic memory, is real enough. You can show somebody a comb for a few seconds and he can tell you how many teeth there are. But it's most common in children and fades with age. At any rate, Cruise forgets all about memorizing phone books and teaches Hoffman how to count cards at a Las Vegas casino. They make more than eighty large before being thrown out of town -- enough to save Cruise's big car business.
A movie like this, with two people who are alien to one another but are thrown together by circumstances, has to be handled delicately because everyone already knows that, by the end, the two of them will have bonded emotionally. In a movie like "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray's conversion to humanity is done very well indeed. Here, the transition is a bit contrived. What apparently landed Hoffman in the institution was that he was handling Cruise as a baby and accidentally dropped him in a tub of hot water. This is supposed to be a Big Reveal and our eyes are supposed to tear up. And at the final conference, which will determine Hoffman's fate, the two brothers are left alone for a few minutes and Hoffman leans his head against Cruise's and -- sob. The scene is meaningful in the worst sense. Fortunately, it doesn't end with Hoffman's being "cured" and dancing in the streets. Instead he's packed off back to the farm where Cruise promises to visit him. That's a mature sort of ending.
Hoffman evidently put a lot of effort into learning how to act like an autistic and it pays off. Cruise is lightweight, adequate, and handsome. The Italian inflections that inform Golino's speech are exquisite. It's like listening to an Italian movie in which the phonemes almost accidentally form English words.
I hope the movie doesn't leave anyone with the impression that autistics are all savants because it's far from the truth. Nobody knows what causes it but it's present at birth. An autistic baby is quiet and doesn't care if you pick him up and hug him or not. They're fascinated by glittering objects. (Hoffman says of a Vegas hooker, "She sparkles.") They tend to repeat rhythmic movements such as banging their heads lightly against the wall. And autism is at one end of a continuum, while at the other end is childhood schizophrenia. It's a curious disorder. Experienced observers comment that when you look at the eyes of an autistic child, though they don't respond to anything you do, you just KNOW there's intelligence there.