Change Your Image
marciadietrich
Reviews
Family Pictures (1993)
was real for me
I have two autistic children, one 'normal' as well. It is the lower functioning boy that I could see in this movie. The one who has a bolt on his door to lock him in there for OUR safety. The one that our lives revolve around.
For me this movie hit home on many levels and I felt it was a better movie for focusing more on the effects on the family than solely on the autistic son Randall. He wasn't made into some sort of superhero savant who was going to by skill or chance save the day. He was a force of nature in their lives (Sam Neill says so when holding Randall's ashes, 'so light for such a force'). A force that permeated everything they did (the parents) and everything they became (the siblings). I related to many of the feelings and problems of both the parents. That the father started wanting to send the boy away when the problematic son was still young and the mother clings and refuses againsts all odd ... very, very real to my life.
My rating is lowered slightly only for the length which could have been shorter (guess was a mini series originally and thought it should have been scaled back a bit) and if you are not an Angelica Huston fan (and I'm not) she can occasionally grate on you.
Overall, I found this the most real of any movie on autism because it focused on more than just the quirks of autism as a device plot. It didn't bother me that the family was rich, it actually contrasted the reality of his problems against an even more ideal or perfect situation of having all you want - all you want except for your son to be normal.