The Black Balloon (2008)

Lots of water symbolism in this movie, like with Charlie's Noah's Ark play, and his brother Thomas' lifeguard training. And there's a bathtub scene at the end! There's also a scene at an abandoned army training field with Thomas' girlfriend who kind of looks like Amanda Seyfried that probably also has some symbolic undercurrent, like after Thomas gives her a "beautiful" empty ammunition shell pendant (during a rain storm), she tells him to close his eyes, and says she imagines beyond the fuzzy blackness, she can see her mom. Charlie is there too!Thomas' mom's name is Maggie, which is a diminutive of Margaret, which derives from the Greek word for pearl. So maybe the shell had something to do with mom (pearl)? Mom's portrayed by Toni Collette, who later had a role on the United States of Leeland (Tara) as a mom of a daughter who sat on balloons for a web-cam fetish site. Coincidence!?! Probably! She's a good actress! Thomas' dad works for the Army. His name is Simon and he consults a teddy bear named Rex for advice, and his home life is a disaster! The part where he finally outwits the bullies and rides around the block on his big-wheel is probably the best part of the film!See this movie, even if it's Australian and doesn't have Noah Taylor. It features an artistic kid rubbing poop into carpet and has a great soundtrack!

The Black Balloon, portrays the youth of Thomas Mollison (Rhys Wakefield) under the direction of Elissa Down. Inspired on the book, also written by the director of the movie being approached, it touches one point not as much exploited as expected. Thomas is 15 years old, and lives with his family. His older brother, Charlie (Luke Ford) is autistic and his mother (Toni Collette) is pregnant of the third child. The movie pictures how Thomas deals with is Charlie, now that his mother can't look after him and it's up to him and his father to handle things, while Thomas meets Jackie (Gemma Ward), who'd make him expose his brother. The movie is good, it's not over dramatic nor boring, but the situation between Thom and Jackie brings this movie to close to American Sunday afternoon crap, which is quite a pity. In spite of that, The Black Balloon gives you a whole new idea of how the modern times face the mental ill and what is they're place in our houses. Deep and good for meditation, and that's it, 6/10

If love means accepting someone the way that they are and the way that they are not, the biggest test of that love may come if you must spend your life with an individual that is so disabled that they require constant attention to ensure their safety and that of others. Such is the case for the parents and siblings of Charlie Mollison (Luke Ford) in first-time director Elissa Down's The Black Balloon, the story of a family that has to muster all of its strength to cope with their disabled son Charlie. Charlie is now a teenager but his mental age is around two. Unable to speak or communicate with other than grunts and sign language, he is not only autistic but suffers from attention deficit disorder with hyperactive tendencies.Because his father Simon (Erik Thomson) is a soldier who must move often, Charlie and his family have recently moved to Sydney, Australia. This means a new period of adjustment for all, but mostly for fifteen-year-old Thomas (Rhys Wakefield), a shy teenager who has the additional task of looking after his brother while his mother Maggie (Toni Collette) is pregnant. Life for the Mollisons is not easy or pleasant and the director does not try to sugar-coat it. Students at the high school make disparaging remarks when Charlie's bus drops Thomas off at school, neighbors are upset enough to call the authorities when Charlie sits outside in the yard and pounds a wooden spoon while moaning, and Thomas has to run through the streets chasing Charlie when he bursts out the door in his underwear and barges into a stranger's house.Not much is shown of Thomas' life at school except for his swimming class, an activity that Thomas can barely manage. Things begin to brighten, however, when he meets Jackie (Gemma Ward) in swim class. Jackie takes an interest in him and is open and understanding about the hardships of his family situation, even though he feels like he must hide Charlie in his room when Jackie comes to the house. Jackie, however, is sympathetic when Thomas reacts with outbursts of uncontrolled anger after Charlie spoils his birthday party.Beautifully photographed by Denson Baker, The Black Balloon is no Rain Man or Gilbert Grape. There are no savants here. Having been raised with two autistic brothers, Downs' film is authentic and moving, a powerful, unsentimental cry from the heart filled with impeccable performances that allow us to feel every minute of the family's ordeal. Though the film may leave us shaken, it also can leave us wiser if we realize that regardless of the circumstances, our lives can be enriched if we learn to give of ourselves not out of condescension and duty but out of love.Grateful for Jackie's patience, Thomas begins to include Charlie in his life and attempts to forge a loving bond, providing the film's most touching moment when he participates with Charlie in a musical performed by Charlie's class. As he embarks on a journey of self discovery, Thomas knows that there will be times when he rejoices in seeing his brother happy and other times when he aches for his freedom. At times like these, he can only trust in the fact that "the universe is born of love and in love it remains", understanding that, in the words of Vivekananda, "All beings great or small, are equally manifestations of the divine, the difference is only in the degree of manifestation."

When the Mollison family move to town, the neighbors don't come over to say "hello", they don't send their kids over to play, and they don't miss a chance to stare in annoyance. The Mollison's are mostly normal except for one major difference, they care for a severely disabled, autistic and ADD son, Charlie. But his mother sometimes refers to him as her little "Cheeky Monkey". He introduces himself to the neighbors by sitting in the yard banging large, wooden spoons or sticks repeatedly. Everyone stares at the unusual, new family, and little kids ride up to ask the other son, Thomas, about Charlie's condition."The Black Balloon" is a quirky and enjoyable film for the realistic way it approaches a family's struggle to cope with bringing up an autistic child. They could easily be any typical family. If they were normal, they would be in the upper level of ideal families: two parents, two children, and another one on the way. You can easily imagine the issues they encounter since they seem to react the way any normal family would react to fairly outrageous situations.The director, Elissa Down, has personal experience with two autistic brothers and was able to model Charlie after one of them. This makes for some oddball behavior that a writer probably wouldn't stumble upon by chance. If you don't keep a constant watch on Charlie, he's liable to run out the door in nothing but his colorful undies and invade a neighbor's house to use their bathroom. Locks sometimes help. But if you lock him in his room without keeping an eye on him, he might just entertain himself by splattering the carpet with poo and joyfully playing with it.So you can see his brother Thomas (Rhys Wakefield) has issues to overcome. Much of the film is about Thomas and his difficulty dealing with an atypical childhood. He's new at school and quickly happens to meet one of the cutest girls there, Jackie Masters (Gemma Ward, a successful model at the time she did the role). Many of his first encounters with Jackie are with Charlie at his side chewing on tampons or running down a hall naked. The film holds nothing back and fearlessly portrays the real world odd behaviors that consume an autistic family.One possible advantage is that Thomas matures to real world situations early in his life, which he's hesitant to accept. Thomas has a mix of awkward moments at the school pool (he's not very good at swimming and the gym teacher makes him wear ridiculous yellow swim shorts). He frequently smiles at the odd things going on around him (perhaps a few too many stationary smile scenes). He juggles his desire for Jackie with his hope at having a normal brother one day. Gemma Ward not only has amazing good looks but she also performs Jackie effortlessly, holding back her unexpected capacity for acceptance and understanding until just the right moments.Toni Collette plays the mother, Maggie, with tenacity and playfulness. She's a natural in a chaotic family. Maggie tries to manage her pregnancy and run a household to the point of putting herself in the hospital. She accepts Charlie's limitations and knows he will probably need lifelong care. In one of her best scenes, she cleans up Charlie's feces while she tries to convince Thomas to accept his brother as he is and appreciate that he will have opportunities that Charlie never will.Besides the family struggles, the film has a vivid sense of detail and a wonderful script. It's the sort of intelligent script that makes you want to test out its ideas. This one works: as Jackie and Thomas come out of a lake to get out of the rain and head for cover under a bridge (it's the romance scene of the movie, of course, but first it has a nice little analogy), Jackie tells Thomas to close his eyes and observe what he sees. At first he sees pure blackness, then spots of dancing color, and then finally specks of white dots ingrained in blackness like static on a TV. It never goes away. (Try it sometime; it's true.) The point for the story, however, is that Charlie may have a similar condition in which some features of his experience may never change. Thomas doesn't fully compute the message as he's more interested in other things.The location is in Australia with school uniforms, dorky bike helmets, and 80s-90s clothing (the time period of the story is the early 90s; Super Nintendo being the main game system). The Australian native, Elissa Down, had a part in writing the story as well as directing. Her previous experience was working on short films. She treats the subject with respect, but she also adds a lot of quirky details that make the story enjoyable. Luke Ford plays a convincing version of an autistic child as Charlie. It's not a unique story. It follows in the tradition of "Rain Man" and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" But it has enough unique wit and pervasive reality to make it well worth watching. It isn't as funny as something like "Little Miss Sunshine", but it's on the same wavelength.