"We're just pathetically clueless at it, that's all."

Mozart & The Whale (Widescreen)

"People with Asperger's want contact with other people very much; we're just pathetically clueless at it, that's all." Donald Morton

If you start out with the assumption that what you are going to watch in this movie is a caricature of a mental/emotional condition and not the condition itself, there can be much to be gained from it. There are aspects of the main characters' behaviors that are inappropriate (although I suppose that is often the point when trying to look at the difficulties that people with high functioning Aspergers or Autism face). For a variety of reasons, the movie is a paradox as it might be used to help children understand people with "outside-the-bell-curve" conditions but for a variety of other reasons, it is not really a kid's movie. It has entertainment value as a caricature but perhaps a well-done documentary will serve more effectively as an educational tool.

I suppose it should be said that the characters in this movie make all the same ethical, relational, moral, and life mistakes that all movies seem bound and determined to have their main characters make. Only in the case of people with certain disabilities (differing abilities) the mistakes are probably even dumber. It is not that people who are different cannot find people to love and be loved by. It is simply that the particular individuals in this movie do not know THEMSELVES well enough to be diving into intimacy as deeply and quickly as they do. They betray a greater lack of honest understanding about themselves than any functionaing relationship can handle.

"There is one difference between us," she says, "You want to be normal." And much depends on this difference. Which is why one asks, why have you moved in with someone who is so fundamentally different than you? I suppose the answer is that her particular form of the condition leaves her almost completely at the mercy of impulses.

 The movie makes sure that everything comes out right in the end but after living with theese challenges for any length of time, you wonder if they really could in real time. That will be the strike against it. It attempts to show how lack of knowledge of oneself and of another person can lead to painful heartwrenching trainwrecks in relational/emotional life. But it somehow fixes these trainwrecks up in short time and lets the characters charge right into another round of tragedy without learning to really show down and learn.

But, that said, it does assemble an intriguing lot of characters and gives each of them a different assortment of the symptoms of their condition and if you could just watch the parts of the movie where syptoms are highlighted, it would be interesting fodder for discussion.