I rented The Machinist yesterday plus this other film called “Mozart and the Whale”, starring Josh Hartnett (he’s the only reason I rented it, admittedly). To talk about the Machinist would require a day or so, so I won’t. I get so enthusiastic about it I don’t know where to begin from. But about the Whale film – it was about a group of autistic people – Josh and his girlfriend were autistic too with Asperger's Syndrome. I am not sure what having this syndrome means exactly, but the characters said that because of it “they took things literally”. Example: when the girl was young, her parents where watching the Olympics on TV and were getting very enthusiastic about athletes breaking records, so she goes out to the garden with a bunch of…(vinyl) records and starts breaking them, hoping to enthuse her parents. Another example: Josh’s character goes to a job interview and the employers ask him “what are your plans” and he says smth like “I’ll drive to MacDonalds and have a big mac.”
Anyway, autism is a very serious disability and I am in no position to have any opinion whatsoever about it, it’s just that, well, I thought that this aspect of autism had some sort of charm. Its directness and its naiveté reminded me of the directness and naiveté of children who, by the way also take things literally all the time. But then again, people with autism in many ways remain children throughout life, even though some of them are extremely intelligent, so I guess this naiveté is not surprising. Still, I think there’s something to be learnt from it. I feel that we should all maybe get a little autistic from time to time, if you know what I mean. You see when we grow old we become so…groomed, so refined, so self-censoring, so programmed in order to function in society that we lose all those wild colours that made us…if nothing else, made us ourselves! I guess I envy the deadpan sincerity and shamelessness of children. I mean obviously you have to filter what you say as an adult if you want to be respectful towards others, but if only we could preserve this childlike honestly in cases where there’s no harm caused – like when we fall in love. Wouldn’t things be much easier then?
Anyway, autism is a very serious disability and I am in no position to have any opinion whatsoever about it, it’s just that, well, I thought that this aspect of autism had some sort of charm. Its directness and its naiveté reminded me of the directness and naiveté of children who, by the way also take things literally all the time. But then again, people with autism in many ways remain children throughout life, even though some of them are extremely intelligent, so I guess this naiveté is not surprising. Still, I think there’s something to be learnt from it. I feel that we should all maybe get a little autistic from time to time, if you know what I mean. You see when we grow old we become so…groomed, so refined, so self-censoring, so programmed in order to function in society that we lose all those wild colours that made us…if nothing else, made us ourselves! I guess I envy the deadpan sincerity and shamelessness of children. I mean obviously you have to filter what you say as an adult if you want to be respectful towards others, but if only we could preserve this childlike honestly in cases where there’s no harm caused – like when we fall in love. Wouldn’t things be much easier then?
