NOTE: Even though this movie was already released, I need to tell you that this is my full version of the synopsis of the movie, so I have to warn you that this movie synopsis has spoilers. Don't read on if you have not seen the movie yet--I know most people already have.......
The first time I saw the movie in 1988 , and I think I saw it on HBO or
Cinemax, and I was shocked to find a believable character that was almost
exactly like me. I was in Beacon School at that time for my autism, and the
character, Raymond Babbitt, was in something like Beacon School—at a fictional facility
called Wallbrook.
And I did not even know about what autism meant when I was diagnosed
with autism at 5 (about 1974), until I saw this movie! And it made me so
shocked that this movie mimicked what
Raymond Babbitt felt in the movie. Right in
my heart! That’s why I give four stars for that movie!!!
Even as an autistic-savant myself, it was going to take not just one
watch of this film---but several tries of watching the film, to figure out the
premise, the plot, and how it correlates to my own autism-related struggles.
The premise of the movie seems to be like this---here is this character,
who lost two major family members of his (who was Sanford Babbitt, his father,
and Eleanor Babbitt, his mother), and is lost in his own world as a long-term autistic-savant; that is why
he had ended up in a special halfway house called Wallbrook, along with other
developmentally disabled or autistic people. Charile Babbitt, who works for a
company that deals with converting exhaust emissions on expensive cars to make
sure that it passes the newly-required Environmental Protection Agency standards
(currently dealing with four Lamberghini cars to convert, working with Susanna,
his girlfriend, who also works for the business as a secretary and a bit of an
accountant), starts to investigate something regarding an inheritance that comes
up to a few million dollars that his deceased parents gave to Charlie Babbitt,
but Raymond Babbitt doesn’t know that he got the inheritance at all!
So after Charlie and Susanna go up to Wallbrook to meet up with Charlie,
almost suddenly, but almost tries to keep it secret to Charlie—Dr. Bruner, who
was the main therapist for Charlie Babbitt for a long time and has a big
caseload for him, spills the beans that Charlie is not just a person with
ASD—he is also Raymond’s brother!! We see the first overt signs of Charlie’s
autistic traits and mannerisms---such as memorizing the words of the pilot open
that starts the TV program “The People’s Court”, saying “I don’t know”
ceaselessly in a technique known as “echolalia”, and leaning his upper body back
and forth as if it was in a swinging motion like a pendulum (and Temple
Grandin, a person who had autism in the past, realizes that it is a type of
anti-overload defense mechanism against sensory stimuli that can
overwhelm an autistic).
So with this premise, I can understand the plot.
With the first revelations that Raymond had autism in him, Charlie takes
Raymond, with Dr. Bruner’s permission, out of Wallbrook, but then, sneaks into
the car (which Charlie knows almost everything about the car, which was a Buick
Roadmaster, Fireball 8 Model) and takes him out of the Wallbrook grounds into
the city of Cincinnati, trying to fool Dr. Bruner that it would be a long trip;
they go into a hotel and stay in a type of suite room, and Charlie and her
boyfriend, after Charlie calls for him to get pizza delivered and other stuff
he needs to avoid a possible meltdown from
being out of Walbrook for too long, and Susanna gets so concerned about the
major break in Raymond’s routine that she tells Charlie to get him back to Wallbrook,
but he refuses. In the middle of TV watching, he recites in full another
opening pilot that opens up “Wheel of Fortune”, using the correct, exact words
like the voice-over does on TV.
As night falls, Charlie and Susanna have private sex in one of the rooms
to the hotel suite. As the sexual foreplay reaches its climax, Raymond, who had
donned a Cincinnati Reds shirt, hears the sexual sounds and tries to mimic
their “blow job” sounds with antiphonal hums
to match these sounds. He then enters their room, inches towards their bed.
Charlie’s boyfriend realizes his echoing sounds first and demands that he
intervene with Raymond fast because he has fraternal ties to him, quickly ending
their short-lived intimate romance, and then Raymond is forced to go back (with
Charlie’s angry tirades
and let-downs) to his bed and turns off his
room’s lights.
As Charlie re-approaches Susanna, who is falling half-asleep in a bathtub
full of soap, he tries to touch Susanna’s shoulder with his hand but she quickly
backs off, and there is an explosive argument that turns ugly for Charlie.
Susanna states that she had enough of him lying about
the inheritance and not talking about that
money (the few million dollars that Raymond got) until it was too late. Susanna
decides to end that relationship immediately, saying that “you are using
Raymond”, but Charlie retorts vehemently that he is not, but the girl still had
enough. She darts out of the hotel room with her possessions that she really
needed (her purse, her clothes that she wore on that day), never to be seen
again, and slams the door.
Now Charlie is all alone with Raymond, and then, there is a phone call
from Dr. Bruner, stating that it is urgent that Raymond is sent immediately
back to Walbrook. He knows that he is probably risking prison time for
kidnapping him, but Charlie tries to stall Dr. Bruner, saying that there will
be a civil domestic fight in court soon. So, he will try to fly this person on
a plane to Los Angeles as they go towards the Cincinnati International Airport.
But before they go to the airport, they stop at a café, where a waitress
drops the toothpicks, and Charlie remembered the exact number of toothpicks
that he saw with one swoop. Then there was the problem with the exact placement
of the pancakes that he wanted and he got into a fight with Raymond regarding
it.
As they ride in the Buick towards the airport, he does another type of
“echolalia” when the voice over on the car radio says “97X…(lower glissando to
space shot)….the future of rock and roll!”, responding with
“97X…baaaaammmmmmmmmmmm, the future of rock and roll,” which Charlie did not like
and was too annoying. This was the first barrier to him and Raymond getting to
Los Angeles, his original house.
Now at the airport, while Raymond sits in a desk watching on a portable
TV and being uber-fixated on it, Raymond finds out from a phone call that the 4
Italian luxury cars are threatened with being placed on a lien because he
failed to pay for the conversions on time—they are “past due”. So, as Charlie
forces him off the desk and stand up and head towards the airport gate, he sees
a few airplanes and tells him that he is afraid of airplanes, and mentions some
of the major airline disasters that he knows quite well, down to the flight
numbers, and the exact dates of the crashes. Charlie tries to tell him that
flying is safe but Raymond retorts and does not want to fly. He says that the
only plane that does not crash was Quantas, but Charlie did not like it still
because it would mean an extremely far trip to get to LA. So as Charlie pulls
Raymond towards the boarding gate, Raymond explodes into a screaming meltdown
and then has to give in to Raymond’s demands, and decides that they will not
fly, walk away from the boarding gate, and then they decided that they will
take the car to L.A.
So with the Buick Roadmaster getting out of Cincinnati into a major
interstate highway, they run into a crash scene, and then Charlie tells Raymond
that that major interstate had been known for too many crashes. This infuriates
Raymond so much but he has to give in, now because he realizes now that he will
not get to L.A. in 3 days….it will likely be 10-14 days now. So as they go on a secondary road going
westward towards L.A. and go into
Missouri in a rest stop restaurant, Raymond tells him that you do not go out
because at that point, it was raining. It was not because he was afraid that it
would be thundering with that rain (some autistics have sensory overload issues
with thunder and lightning), but it was he had some hydrophobia especially in
the bathtub when it had running water, and rain was like a bathtub with running
water to him.
As they go deeper into the Midwest right into the Plains, he attempts to
take the wheel of the Roadmaster car very suddenly and almost had an accident,
and he tells him never to do that stupid act again, and then mentions that he
left his boxer shorts at Walbrook and needs these shorts at Kmart, and repeats
this phrase without stopping, angering Raymond so much that he decided to go
into a quaint town in the Plains to stop at a therapist’s office. At the lobby
waiting area, the receptionist says mistakenly to them that he is “artistic”
but Raymond responds that he is “autistic”.
At the therapist’s office, the therapist tries some math problems for
him to solve. He could solve some very difficult mathematical calculations, but
not simple calculations at all—a big, big tipoff that Raymond has Asperger’s.
Now, as they go into the edge of what is now the mountain area towards
the Southwest, they stay in still another motel, and Raymond realizes that a
lien was placed on his credit card, rendering it useless, as he was trying to pay
for the room with the credit card and found that it was rejected, so he had to
pay in cash. In the motel, Charlie utters one of the most famous songs—a bit of
the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” just near the motel room’s bathtub, and
Raymond shows a photo important to Charlie, and then goes to put it right on
the bathtub drain, turns on the water and then Raymond explodes into another
outburst. Raymond does calms down, and realizing that Charlie needs to go back to
Susanna (her former girlfriend), he does with one phone call, saying that he
was sorry and he wants to reconcile, while Raymond gets his much-needed sleep.
Now, as the Buick goes right into Southwest territory, right into
somewhere into like New Mexico or something, Raymond is fixated on certain
things across the highway or along it. Charlie eventually
makes another rest stop to a laundromat,
where he puts sunscreen on Raymond’s face to keep him from being sunburned.
Then Charlie gets the bad news for the business from her reconciled girlfriend,
Susanna, saying that the credit card company repossessed the four luxury cars
for defaulting on the $80,000 payment, and is threatened with the end of the
business if the payment is not given in a few days. With that, he goes into the
open sand area from the phone booth and just like Raymond’s meltdown’s, Charlie
explodes into a meltdown with a tirade---“Son of a bitch!”
Eventually, they go into the heart of the Las Vegas strip and past Las
Vegas to a suburban hotel close to this famous city, and at its restaurant,
Raymond finds something that has to do with the card playing that is very
common at the casinos of Las Vegas (craps, poker, blackjack, and the like). It
is a jukebox, and the song selection area had certain numbers and titles
related to those numbers. As if he was an expert numerologist, Raymond was able
to recite all of the numbers related to the hits in the jukebox, which amazed
Charlie so much. So Charlie had a big idea.
Outside in the daytime, knowing that he had owed $80,000, Charlie did a
quick test on Raymond in blackjack, pretending to be the dealer and being in
the card area throwing random cards on the front of the Roadmaster. He then
tells him what cards he had left---and mentioned the exact number names of the
cards, and he got it on the nose! With that, he and Charlie take a turn back
east to Las Vegas.
So with that, Charlie explained the basic house rules of the Las Vegas
casinos and warned Raymond never to count cards at all in public. Ever!
So, to get ready for the casino in Caesar’s Palace, they go into Las Vegas,
first to a pawn shop to get rid of Charlie’s watch, and then, go to a clothing
store in Caesar’s Place to get dress suits, and finally, go down to the
basement to the casino area. I realized that Raymond had a bit of visual
sensory overload and auditory sensory overload…mainly from the flashing lights
from the prize indicators, the moving slots in the slot machine, the alarms
ringing when someone wins a prize at the slot machines, and the othervarious
noises from the casinos. Raymond was slightly scared but there was no major
outbursts from him.
And finally, deep into the casino area, they head to the blackjack table
along with other blackjack players. Their first entry was the first 2 cards
that hit 18. And then the dealer gets a Queen, which at first Charlie did not
like, fearing they could lose the hand and the house would win. But 4 Queens
later in the return hand, and Charlie wins, saying that “I love this town!”
As they amassed winning chips, after
winning chips, after winning ships….from red colored chips, to white, to gold,
to black……the security personnel in the “eye in the sky” over the blackjack
table got very suspicious, especially Mr. Kinsler, the head of security at Caesar’s
palace, because they were winning in the 6-deck shoe area of the blackjack
table without stopping for too long of a period of time, so Mr. Kinsler tries
to tell his buddy, Sam to get on that table Charlie and Raymond are in, which was
no. 47. The workers at the security camera area under Kinsler’s control at
first see nothing illegal
that they were doing in the table, but now
get nervous saying that either one or the other is “counting [cards] into a
6-deck shoe.”
Well, the characters that played Anthony and Cleopatra and other casino
friends were attracted to the table, not just security, which made them quite
famous. Eventually they stop as they amassed $83,000 in winnings, as Raymond
hears something grinding just close to their table….it was a roulette wheel,
and he gets attracted to it so much and wants to see it. It has been mentioned
earlier that some autistics love spinning things and that was why Raymond went
to that roulette, Charlie realizes it and says you cannot get out of the
blackjack table during a hand in progress, but suddenly, Raymond says the
number “20” as the roulette wheel operator spins the wheel, and repeating the
number “20” lots of times beckons Charlie quickly that the roulette arrow stick
will land on 20 after the wheel stops spinning….so Charlie drops the $3,000 in
chips to the roulette dealer on that “20”. The wheel slows down, and then stops
almost exactly on the “20” but the stick then goes on the next number…which is
“1”, and completely stops at the 1. Charlie is out $3,000, but Raymond doesn’t
realize that he lost that small $3,000 bet, tries to hug him but he does a very
brief acute meltdown (he was probably upset about the lost bet). They decide to
cash-in and play later.
At the collection table at a restaurant just near the gambling area,
they collect the money, and realizing that they will have a hotel room because
of the great time they did at the blackjack table (saying that it was
“comped”), Charlie treats Raymond to the Life
of Riley in Vegas, He tells him to
wait on the bar table, and then, an unsuspecting blonde-haired lady, is attracted
to him and approaches Raymond—her name was Iris. Charlie holds back but watches
their move to make sure that Iris doesn’t do any prostitution on Raymond. Regrettably, as Iris and Raymond converse
with another to get to know each other, Raymond tips off her friends saying
“We’re counting cards”, and then, Raymond gets way off focus with a sudden new
phrase, “Are you taking prescription medication?”, and Iris did not like it at
all, and decides to end the conversation, and their possible date relationship
as well. Charlie realizes that it is over, so Raymond is taking upstairs to the
High Rollers Suite (which in my guesses can cost somebody about $1,500 a
night), but it was comped so the hotel will take the tab—not them. Charlie
understood some of his autistic traits so that high-rollers room needed to be a
bit like Walbrook. His bed is very close to the window. He recalls (Charlie)
that we mastered the Las Vegas casino, although losing $3,000 in roulette. But
at that point, Raymond is still think of Iris even though Iris left him for
good and has strong surrealistic hallucinations about having a date with Iris
and wants to dance with Iris.
So, with no ladies around, he
was the one to teach Raymond how to slow dance on the date. He tells him that even with the tactile
sensory overload problems he has, he tells him that you have to
touch when you dance, and Raymond almost
bows out but does give in, and realizes that Charlie had to touch him pretty
slowly or Raymond would explode. Eventually, they go into closed position…and
then intimate closed position, with swaying
motions (I suspect the swaying motions negated any possibility of overload from
tactile means), as the famous old-time cabaret blues number, “At Last” (sung by
Etta James), wafted from a portable radio in the suite.
As the dance ended, Charles congratulated Raymond with I think a
hi-five, and tried to hug him, but then, as he tried to hug Raymond, Raymond
darted away and exploded in a very acute but short-lived scream (his
uber-defense mechanisms against tactile sensory overload kicked in).
Somehow, Susanna, by surprise, finds the high-rollers suite, knocks on the
door, and is let in, and tells Charlie that sadly, her business is now bankrupt
due to the default on paying the loan, but she is worried about Raymond in Las
Vegas because it is known as the “sin city”, and Las Vegas can make you
bankrupt if you are not careful when you are rolling the dice. Susanna then
hears that Raymond’s date with Iris is coming soon, and she realizes that
Raymond was uber-fixated on that portable TV.
They go downstairs to an area just near the gambling table, into a sort
of music area where a jazz singer with a small jazz ensemble was playing; however
the portable TV that Charlie had carried tipped off Sam, and they approach
Susanna, Charlie, and Raymond. Charlie is then summoned to see Mr. Kinsler, and
hence has to leave Raymond and Susanna alone for a few minutes. At Mr.
Kinsler’s security office, their security team catches him in the act of
counting cards in a six-deck-shoe in a way that the house could lose a lot of
money. They do not arrest Charlie for illegal acts, but because they found out
the secret of how Charlie makes that money from the house, they demand that Charlie get all of the
winnings and get out of Las Vegas, even with Charlie’s reluctant response that
they were not doing anything in that table to get them arrested.
Meanwhile, Susanna, realizing that Raymond will not get the “Iris” date,
makes a compromise by doing something like a semi-simulation—she pretends to be
Iris, goes to the elevator, closes the elevator, and then, responding to
Raymond’s words, tries to kiss Raymond. Almost had an outburst at that point
but at least Raymond accepts, and after the kiss, Charlie says that it felt
“wet”.
Back to the Roadmaster outside Caesar’s palace, Raymond finally is
allowed by Charlie and Susanna to drive through the fountains of the Caesar’s
Palace for fun, rather slowly, and eventually gets out of Las Vegas to one part
of Los Angeles, where Charlie drops off Susanna into a transitional house in
order to help her get employed again, and leaves Susanna there.
Finally, Charlie and Raymond are back in Los Angeles, and finally into
Charlie’s own house. Mr. Bruner then calls again and tells Charlie to meet up
with him and his crew in a few days to figure out how to deal with Raymond and
whether or not to charge Charlie with kidnapping or not.
Meanwhile, Charlie helps Raymond feel better about the different house
than it was when he was in Walbrook, giving him some things that were his
favorite in Walbrook, like the VHS video of “Who’s On First Base” by Abbott and
Costello, and a TV where he can sway forward and back when he danced, and some
orange juice.
Dr. Bruner and Charlie do meet up face-to-face in a preliminary chitchat
outside in a plaza and Bruner is extremely worried that Raymond could end up
either in a mental institution for the rest of his life—or even in a jail cell
arrested for a crime---or even commit suicide because of his autistic traits.
So as a lure to bring Raymond back home to Walbrook and an attempt to get Bruner’s
custody of Raymond again, Bruner gives him a check of $250,000 (on the
condition that Charlie surrenders Raymond to him so that he can take the money
unconditionally), but because Charlie knows this person so much and is still
not really trusting Bruner’s realization that Raymond is Charlie’s brother, he
refuses to take the check and walks away.
On the next day in Charlie’s home, Raymond was baking something in the
microwave oven and something was burning and smoke wafts up from the oven all
the way up to the ceiling where a smoke alarm is hanging. Raymond was just
walking about in that area of the kitchen until suddenly, the smoke alarm
shrieks and the continuous, sustained din causes him to burst out into an
auditory sensory panic, hitting his head at the door numerous times, waking up
Charlie, and then, he realizes quickly that Charlie is in a panic, and turns
the oven off, and then, has to find a long object to turn that smoke alarm
off---he finds a long broom and then he pokes the stick part of the broom at
the alarm until the alarm disintegrates and the alarm stops shrieking. He then
quickly tells Raymond, “Raymond! Raymond! It’s over! It’s over! It stopped!”
Raymond stops hitting his head but is still swaying a lot.
Then Charlie sits down disappointed,
realizing the unstoppable autism that he has, feeling that it was a bit
useless.
Then, finally at a café in Los Angeles, there is a bit of a scenario at
a malt shop where Charlie makes a joke about the pancakes that he had faced in
another café in Cincinnati, where Raymond had now felt less panicky and starts
to laugh a little bit.
Now, Charlie and Raymond go into a lawyer’s office to meet up with Dr.
Bruner in a special office. They are informed that no kidnapping charges will
be placed against Charlie but it is going to be a major decision involving
keeping Charlie with Raymond or sending Raymond back to Walbrook. The Bruner
team, before they decide what Raymond would do with one choice or another,
tells Raymond several questions about the cross-country trip.
As the decision is attempted by Raymond, he has reciprocity problems
with answering the question, saying that he wants to go back to Walbrook and
live with Charlie Babbitt, but the team says to Raymond that you cannot do both.
Eventually, Raymond decides—with strong reluctance and delay, to go back to
Walbrook. As the team leaves and leaves them alone with Raymond and Charlie, Charlie
consoles him on making that pretty difficult decision, and he is going to try
to do everything he can to help Raymond…even with his continued autistic traits
that had continued.
So, as the movie concludes, Charlie and Raymond go to the Amtrak Train
station, and gives him going-away gifts that he had in Walbrook, including
cheeseballs and a portable TV, and tells Raymond that he will come back to see
him in a few weeks…and to make it a bit of a surprise, Dr. Bruner is the
special conductor for his own car, and as he lets Raymond leave to get on the
train, he sits with Bruner side-by-side,
in the same row seat. Then, in his semi-formal dress on a sunny day, we
see the train starts to roll out slowly, and then pick up speed as it goes
away. All alone on the train platform as the train goes away, Charlie sits
still and realizes that he now needs to go on with his life—he will see Raymond
someday, when he comes to see him again.
