New movie 'Ezra' gives nuanced, realistic portrayal of autism

Movies have come a long way in their depictions of people on the autism spectrum following Rain Man (1988), the first mainstream movie to deal with autism in any depth; and Ezra, the latest film to portray autism on-screen, which is currently playing in theaters around Israel, gives a nuanced, realistic, and heartrending look at a boy with autism and his family, which tells truths that Rain Man glossed over.

Directed by Tony Goldwyn and with a script by Tony Spiridakis, which is based on his own experiences raising a son on the spectrum, this moving and often funny film illustrates the quote by Dr. Stephen Shore, a music professor on the autism spectrum: “When you’ve met one individual with autism, you’ve met one individual with autism.”

As the mother of an adult son on the autism spectrum, for years I have had to disabuse well-meaning strangers of the notion that my son is a genius like the character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, which won Oscars in 1989 for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

Rain Man was certainly entertaining, with great acting by Hoffman, and in retrospect much of it is accurate in its portrayal of the small subset – estimated at about 5% – of people on the autism spectrum who have savant abilities.

Rain Man as the template for autism

The problem that I and many parents of people on the spectrum have with the movie is that because it was so successful and so well done, it became the template for autism in the public consciousness. For years, people who only knew about autism from Rain Man would assume that my son had memorized every book in the library or could count cards in Vegas, the way Hoffman’s character does in the movie. That was what they took from Rain Man, and the real challenges of daily life for people on the spectrum were lost on them.

But as Ezra shows very clearly, autism is a spectrum condition, and people who are on it often exhibit a very wide range of behaviors. The same person who can have great abilities in one area can face extreme challenges in others, and all of this can shift quickly.

You’ve never met a kid like Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald, a teen actor who is on the spectrum himself), because there is no other kid like Ezra. And there is no other father quite like Max (Bobby Cannavale), Ezra’s dad, a stand-up comedian who makes jokes about having an autistic son as part of his self-deprecating act.

Ezra’s parents have split up, and he lives with his mother, Jenna (Rose Bryne), a New Jersey real estate broker who makes caring for her son her top priority. Ezra also has a close relationship with his loving grandfather (Robert De Niro, who is the father of a son on the autism spectrum).

Cannavale is great at playing unhinged guys, and he’s perfect for this part, which shows that parents of kids on the spectrum aren’t only self-sacrificing Mother Teresa types or mean, cold people who can’t accept having a special-needs child. Sometimes, like Max, they are loving parents who want to do the best for their kids but have problems of their own and occasionally make decisions impulsively for all the wrong reasons – meaning, they are like everyone else.

Ezra and Max share a common language of movie dialogue they have memorized, something that will resonate with many parents of children on the spectrum. When my son is apprehensive, for example, he will quote the line, “I’m not worried, you shouldn’t be worried,” from Toy Story, to let me know that he actually is worried.

Ezra knows every word of The Big Lebowski and dozens, maybe hundreds of other movies, and is obviously incredibly intelligent. But he has little awareness of danger around him, and he gets in trouble at the school where he is mainstreamed after he leads the kids out of the classroom and into the street. Later, when he overhears Bruce (played by the director, Tony Goldwyn), his mother’s boyfriend, complaining about Max, he can’t understand that Bruce is joking when he says he can get a hit man to get rid of his father, and runs out into the street at night to warn Max, nearly getting run over.

This may sound unbelievably hair-raising, but for parents of children on the spectrum, it is absolutely relatable. A 2017 study from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found that the average life expectancy for people on the spectrum is 36, due in large part to accidental deaths in childhood. Let that sink in for a minute.

The child welfare system takes custody of Ezra after the incident and tells Max and Jenna that he must go to a special-needs school and take an antipsychotic, a very heavy-duty drug that, in spite of all its downsides, can be enormously helpful for some people on the spectrum, allowing them to control the impulses that trigger violent meltdowns.

Max sees the court’s decision as a plot to destroy his son and to keep them apart. Reacting in an extreme way, he attacks the judge physically, and a restraining order is issued that keeps him away from his son.

Acting out of desperation, which reflects both his profound love for his son as well as his own deep-seated psychological problems, he kidnaps Ezra from his mother’s house and takes him on a crazy road trip, first to see his old friend, a comic (Rainn Wilson), who now runs a camp in Michigan, and then to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! – a gig his manager (Whoopi Goldberg) has booked for him in spite of everything.

A ROAD trip is a great way to tell a story about someone on the autism spectrum, because by definition, a journey like this is full of surprises and takes everyone out of their comfort zones. It can be especially challenging for people on the spectrum, because most of them thrive on following routines, which can often be quite rigid.

In Rain Man, they hit the road because Raymond was afraid of flying, and it forced Raymond into all kinds of new experiences.

These autism road-trip movies share another common thread, perhaps the most important one of all: They all come when a family member is forced to make a difficult decision about the future of a person they love but can’t always help.

As the trip in Ezra unfolds, and Ezra’s grandfather joins them very briefly, Max is forced to confront some crucial truths about himself and his son. He comes to understand that part of the reason he so strenuously resists putting Ezra in a special-needs school is that he needs to think of Ezra as a kind of superhero – the superhero Ezra longs to be – who can overcome any obstacle. The movie Ezra is enormously successful at portraying the special needs, abilities, and talents of a very quirky father and son, and I hope will help viewers understand the quirky people in their own lives.

The writer is the author of the novel, ‘If I Could Tell You’, about four mothers whose children are diagnosed with autism.