Life, Animated (2016)
At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.
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This documentary follows a family and its struggles to break through to their autistic son and brother, which they eventually do through the medium of Disney movies. The film follows the autistic son as he leaves home to live on his own in an assisted living facility, while it recounts the evolution of his condition and its effects on the family."Life, Animated" is a perfectly fine film and one that I enjoyed without feeling especially strongly about it. It's an interesting if not fascinating peek into the world of autism, but the parts of the film I found most compelling were the brief interviews with the older brother, who is terrified at the prospect of a future where he is single- handedly responsible for taking care of his brother. There was a whole other documentary to be made out of that.And the Disney company couldn't have asked for a better commercial. At first I was amazed that the filmmakers were able to get rights to all of the Disney clips shown throughout, but then I thought about how much free publicity the company would get from this film alone and was no longer surprised.A nominee for Best Documentary Feature at the 2016 Academy Awards.Grade: B+
Thank you Owen for helping everyone understanding, 'it is just your voice' which prevented you from communicating. Enjoyed every minute of this ground breaking documentary. Ground breaking because it was about Owen's personal journey shared with the world through a medium that he loves,animated film which was a vehicle which gave him back his voice.
At the age of 3, Owen Suskind disappeared into the fog of autism. Some years later, as he came out with a garbled quote from The Little Mermaid, his parents realised that their son was still inside there somewhere, and capable of complex thought.This documentary tells Owen's story, and illustrates how Owen - with considerable help - has worked towards building some sort of life with a foothold in everyday conventionality, and has done so by using Disney animated films as reference points.This is a film which should be seen, so I wouldn't want to say more. Owen's journey is daunting, challenging, funny, sad, moving and, ultimately, inspiring. This is an excellent film.
A film with the premise that this has and with that specific story and subjects in front of the camera was always going to be very emotional. The key is not to make a film like this overly emotional, overly contrived, and overly manipulative. I don't think the film is. It earns its sentiment and it's able to sensitively look at these people without actually exploiting them. It's quite a special story, not one that many documentary filmmakers would be telling, but one that really brings a lot of issues into perspective. It's fascinating and definitely recommended for audiences not very familiar with autism. It may break your heart but it's also very uplifting.