Strangeness on the screen: movies or documentaries about people in my referenced list of famous or important people diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition (such as Asperger syndrome) or subject of published speculation about whether they are/were on the autistic spectrum
Amadeus (1984) recommended
Director - Milos Forman (won an Academy Award for this movie)
A very entertaining movie about the life of Mozart, who was played by Tom Hulce
An Angel at My Table (1990)
Director – Jane Campion (won a number of awards for this movie)
Based on the autobiographies by Janet Frame, Kerry Fox played Frame as an adult
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Director – Ron Howard (won an Academy Award for this movie)
About the life of mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe
Born Free (1966)
Director – James Hill
Joy Adamson and her game warden husband raise a lioness cub and re-introduce it to life in the wild, Joy Adamson was played by Virginia KcKenna
The Boy with the Incredible Brain (2005) recommended
This is an episode in the Extraordinary People documentary series. I believe this is the same as or similar to the 60 minute 2005 documentary that was screened on TV under the title Brainman. Martin Weitz is credited as the director of Brainman and he is also credited as the producer of this documentary, which was apparently directed by Steve Gooder. This is a 47 minute documentary about Daniel Tammet, who displays his incredible calculating and language abilities, describes his synaesthesia, and travels to the United States to meet another famous autistic savant, Kim Peek. This documentary can be viewed through Google Videos or YouTube.
Creation (2009)
Director – Jon Amiel
Biographical feature movie about the life of Charles Darwin, who is played by Paul Bettany.
Gaudi’s Barcelona (2003) recommended
Distributor in Australia - Marcom Projects
An interesting documentary DVD showing stunning buildings, interiors, fittings and furnishings that were designed by “eccentric genius” architect Antoni Gaudi, and it also gives biographical information about Gaudi and the historical context in which he lived.
Genius Within: the Inner Life of Glenn Gould (2009)
Director – Michele Holzer and Peter Raymont
A documentary about the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. Reportedly includes interviews with the married woman who had a five-year live-in affair with Gould, and her son and daughter.
HG Wells: War with the World (2006)
Director – James Kent
Biographical movie about H. G. Wells, who is played by Michael Sheen.
In the Realms of the Unreal (2004) recommended
Director – Jessica Yu
Documentary about the reclusive outsider artist and author Henry Darger.
Jinnah (1998)
Director – Jamil Dehlavi
About the life of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan. A young Jinnah played by Richard Lintern, an adult Jinnah played by Christopher Lee.
Khartoum (1966)
Director - Basil Dearden
About Major-General Charles Gordon’s defence of the city of Khartoum during the Battle of Khartoum. Gordon was played by Charlton Heston.
Kinsey (2004)
Director – Bill Condon
About the life of Alfred Kinsey, American sex researcher, played by Liam Neeson.
Man on the Moon (1999) recommended
Director – Milos Forman
An entertaining movie about the life of Andy Kaufman who is played by Jim Carrey (who won a Golden Globe Award for this performance in 2000)
Other actors - Danny De Vito, Courtney Love
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) recommended
Director – Martyn Burke
Made for TV semi-humorous documentary-drama about the men who created Microsoft and Apple corporations. Bill Gates is played by Anthony Michael Hall.
RKO 281 (1999)
Director – Benjamin Ross
About the “battle over Citizen Kane” between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, Welles played by Liev Schreiber, made for TV.
Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes (2008) recommended
Director – Jon Ronson
A fascinating documentary about the 1000 odd boxes of memorabilia in Stanley Kubrick’s estate, and what their contents, and the boxes themselves, reveal about the legendary movie director.
Temple Grandin (2010) upcoming
Director – Mick Jackson
Made for TV biographical movie about Temple Grandin, who is played by Claire Danes.
Wittgenstein (1993)
Director – Derek Jarman
About the life of genius homosexual philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, played by Clancy Chassay
Link to my referenced list of famous or important people diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition or subject of published speculation about whether they are/were on the autistic spectrum
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2006/09/referenced-list-of-famous-or-important.html
These could be the basis of a movie night.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of interesting viewing in this list!
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd put together the list in honour of Temple Grandin who has been depicted in a biographical telemovie that will be broadcast next month.
here is another asperger related movie for your list:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499501/
if you could say it in words (2008)
I've taken a look at that movie's synopsis at IMDB, and it does make the movie sound like your standard Hollywood negative depiction of a person who has Asperger syndrome.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I don't have a lot of time for these Hollywood movies about a man with AS and a neurotypical woman. In real life, it seems that people who have AS tend to have partners who also have autistic or neurologically atypical characteristics, so I think the movie premise of AS contrasted with "normal" has little to do with AS and relationships in the real world.
Anyhow, it's interesting to know that such movies are being made in recent years, and thanks for the info. AS as a theoretical idea seems to be an increasingly popular theme in fictional books and movies. Personally I prefer to watch docos and biographical/based on real life movies.
It looks like you wrote this list about two years ago, before you became skeptical about Daniel Tammet's abilities. When did this skepticism develop?
ReplyDeleteThe skepticism fully developed as I researched the details of Tammet's life in this last few months, triggered by reading Foer's book, but there was always a degree of skepticism, as you can see in the degree of distance with which I reported the details of who made the Brainman film. I knew that Brainman and The Boy With the Incredible Brain were virtually the same film, but I found very different listings of the directors and producers for these films, which I thought didn't make sense. When I wrote this movie review I hadn't come across any mention of Ammond as an associate producer, and if I had I wouldn't have known what her full role had been.
ReplyDeleteI had reservations about including Tammet in both of my lists - of famous people identified as autistic and famous synaesthetes, and because of this his inclusion was delayed and what I wrote was carefully pinned down to sources, lest it seem as though I was making claims about his story rather than merely reporting what I had read.
The one thing that perhaps triggered my skepticism first was Tammet's very odd account of his father's illness in his first book. The description was extremely vague and the illness very non-specific -physical collapse, ill-temper and heavy breathing, and it was not named, but was clearly mentioned to make some type of point, apparently the point that Tammet had inherited some funny genes. It appeared to me that Tammet wanted to depict his father as ill in some way, but couldn't decide what illness to choose, or was contrained for legal or personal reasons from telling the full story. Later I have found out that Tammet made claims that his father was schizophrenic that got into one of the 2007 journal papers. An uninformed person might think a genetic link between Tammet's autism, synaesthesia and epilepsy, his father's supposed schizophrenia and Tammet's paternal father's severe epilepsy might sound plausible, but I believe that none of these conditions are actually linked with schizophrenia, and knowing how rare sz, AS and severe epilepsy individually are, the whole thing starts to sound more like a story than real life. Tammet is depicted as a super-synaesthete with synaesthesia that is more complex and bestows more strange powers than the usual case of synaesthesia, and synaesthesia is very much an inherited thing, so we'd expect to see lots of other synaesthetes in Tammet's family, considering that most synaesthetes seem to report other syns in their family, and Tammet's super-syn could be due to 2 genes for syn rather than one. So where are all of these other syns in his family??? Syn is thought to be the result of a deficiency in the normal developmental process of pruning-back of connections in the brain. Schizophrenia is thought to be the result of this normal pruning process being over-done. It appears that sz and syn have opposite causes. So how plausible is the suggestion that a super-synaesthete has a schizophrenic father?