My Review of the HBO Movie: Temple Grandin; "Different But Not Less"

Here are ten thoughts on the movie (yes I do like to break conventions and if that means writing a list instead of a review for this piece so be it)
1. The movie's opening words perfectly set the tone. Those words being, "My name's Temple Grandin. I'm not like other people. I think in pictures, then connect them." So right away we, the viewers, know we're about to learn not only about someone who thinks differently than others but - I/we hope - about how people with autism also think differently.
2. As I'll stress again below I hope everyone sees both this movie when it's on HBO this weekend and, when it comes out, the Horse Boy movie. The latter will be, in a shorter version, on PBS in April as well as coming out as the full length movie on DVD. For more about Horse Boy you can read my interview with his father which has links to conversationswith others in his family. That's all I'm going to say about those movies so as to avoid complicating an already complex issue. As Temple said after the movie one reason why discussions, not to mention diagnosis, of autism is difficult is because it varies so much from person to person.
I have gone back and forth in recent days and weeks - heck, years really - on how I feel about books and movies about people like Temple Grandin. Or I spoke about this a little in my memoir piece about working in special education, namely the fact that, while it's useful and helpful to understand how Temple thinks or, in the other case, what helped The Horse Boy do well, neither of those two are necessarily representative of people with autism.
The very fact that Temple has written several books while some with autism struggle just to learn to read is a quick overly simplistic way to explain it. So at first when I began working with kids and adults with special needs I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I soon realized - mostly by co-workers pointing this out - that those needing my help had problems far beyond anything described in that book.
With both movies I was happily proven wrong in that there is much that can be gleaned from them that can be helpful to understanding autism and people who are autistic. See the next few points for examples.
4. One of the most brilliant things the movie does - and there are many - was to magnify the sounds of various things Temple encounters, especially early in the movie when we're first trying to get our head inside, well, her head. So when she is in a room and the sound of a fan seems near deafening, as does the sound of a fish tank, and later other objects, we begin to realize just how distracting those things can be. In comments after the movie she spoke to this, saying being sensitive to sound may be a minor nuisance to some people with autism, yet debilitating to others.
5. The movie also nails perfectly the trouble people with autism - who Temple sometimes refers to simply as autists - have understanding social cues. As Temple says in the movie (which is based on her books) she understands animals but she has trouble understanding people. That matches my experience working and talking with people with autism and Aspergers. Abstract ideas may lose them but then there are areas where they can focus and understand some things, in her case science, way better than most people.
6. The movie, at times, reminded me of something the television series Numb3rs does really well when it uses graphs and analogies and metaphors to explain complicated ideas. Here, in this movie, it takes that idea to the next degree when it will switch from how most people may be viewing something like, say, a gate, to how Temple is seeing it, with graphs and charts showing the length of the gate, the angle at which it is turning, etc. Later she made her own drawings and graphs to make the gate more sophisticated. Temple was excited, she told us after the screening, that they used some of her own drawings and graphs in the movie. The "geek" part of her loves that, she said.
7. The good news is the movie had some brilliant comments and metaphors. I LOVED that when Temple mentioned being different she added the key phrase, "Different but not less," which I think is a perfect response to those who see people with special needs as being less - less intelligent or less understanding - because that is really not the case. As with another repeated mantra of Temple about new situations requiring going through a new door - with much symbolism - this "different but not less" sentence was repeated more than once and risked being overdone.
If it was in a fictional movie I would have complained that the director was hitting us over the head with it when we got it the first time but as it's based on her own memoirs I was fine with. Besides, if it was only mentioned once and people missed it then that would have been a missed opportunity.
There was another great comment by Temple repeated twice which I also liked. It was a comment about improving the structures of slaughterhouses. "Nature is cruel but that does not mean we have to be. We owe them respect." Something like 50 percent of slaughterhouses in the United States were based on designs by Temple, with the intention of being less cruel and painful and confusing for the animals. How cool is that?
8. The hugging machine - also known as a squeeze machine - was fascinating. I had heard that she has made a machine - you can read about it here - that, well, here's how she describes it to a very confused roommate in college: "It's a machine I made. It feels like a hug. Want a hug?" She received the idea after seeing a contraption used on animals. I knew this was an accomplishment of Temple's but I did not know the back-story and the way it was explained in this movie is compelling and engaging.
9. I love that Temple mentions in the movie that her favorite Star Trek character is Mr. Spock, adding, "We have a lot in common." For a long time people, when the topic of autism comes up, mention the movie Rain Man. And while that movie helped, in some ways, people to understand some issues faced by those with autism Spock might be a better reference point. Because Temple, like Spock, is driven by logic and finding out answers to questions and if that means sometimes breaking social cues, then so be it.
10. Lastly, the director did a great job in showing us how Temple sees things, as she says, in pictures. Not only did we understand but we also saw how this could be quite confusing. When her beloved science teacher, who she credited last nite with her success (along with family and friends), suggested she go into the field of animal husbandry we saw a photo of a man who was just married to an animal and laughed but could understand why that would be confusing. Similarly when her aunt told her that she and her husband get up with the rooster, she had a confusing image of them standing on a fence with the crow actually crowing too.