Review: Life Animated - a podcast by SYN Media

Roger Ross Williams' latest feature documentary is about a 23-year-old autistic man who's obsessed with Disney movies - basically, me, if you just wind his age back two years, move him from America to Australia and rotate his sexuality 180 degrees. In light of that, you'll have to forgive me since I can't exactly distance myself from what is pretty much my own biography. Mostly, I was just overjoyed to see a real person that I can relate to standing on the screen in front of me. I feel like I've earned that given how much of my life I've been looking at that screen. Not only is he obsessed with something that is neither maths or IT, he is also not a little kid: he is a self-aware adult, and fortunately Williams knows how to treat him as such. Unlike the subjects of most other autism documentaries, he is old enough to reflect on his own past and current experiences of friendship, love, and coming of age, and he is actually given the space here to share his reflections.

Owen Suskind, the man in question, has watched every single animated film that Disney has ever made, and memorised every single line of dialogue. Most of these stories and characters have been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. They have a place in his heart and mind that goes far beyond their nostalgic value.

Why does he love Disney so much? This is probably the only question he never answers for us. Not that I blame him, I wouldn’t really know where to start with that one. It’s just such an integral part of my psyche, of my personality and identity that it really would require me to step outside of myself to explain where that obsession came from and why it has endured. Owen’s parents talk about the comforting predictability in watching these same movies over and over, not only in that individually they never change but also that there are certain things you can always expect from a Disney animation, such as a happy ending. They also think it might be that the softness of the animation gels well with his sensory hypersensitivities, or the fact that the characters are, ironically, both very colourful and very black and white in their design. It’s a pretty clinical and simplistic explanation, but it’s not a bad start.

What the film itself suggests, even if no one explicitly says it, is that these movies are a thrilling escape into a very different universe, a “whole new world” if you like, filled with endless possibility. The life of an autistic kid in a non-autistic world can be painfully lonely. Of course, Owen himself describes better than anyone else just how crushingly isolating it is. You want to make friends as much as anyone else does, but everyone you meet just dismisses you as the “weird” kid. By the end of primary school, the word “weird” can start to feel like a hateful slur. Everything about you that is unique, everything you love, everything you do, your entire identity is pushed aside and pigeon-holed into this single, meaningless category that no child wants to be a part of.

Both Owen and I eventually gave up trying to play with other children and would play with the Disney characters instead. You still have fun that way and enjoy being a child. They can actually feel like good substitutes for friends. Up to a certain point, they fill that gaping hole. Even when you leave the house, you can spend ages revisiting them in your mind. Owen still likes to recite some of their best lines to himself when he’s out and about, in the way that most other people might sing to themselves.

It’s also satisfying to make your up your own stories about them in your head. It’s the closest you can get to actually bringing them to life, and, until you finally learn to accept yourself and start to be accepted by others, this is the closest you can come to being a hero.

At about the age of ten, Owen had written and illustrated a hundred-page story about all of the wise and quirky Disney sidekick characters, naming himself the “protector of the sidekicks” who kept them safe from the monster terrorising the forest that was their home. It’s easy to see why Owen identifies so strongly with these funny or sage-like side characters. As someone with unusual mannerisms and very specific interests, if this was any other movie he would most likely be a side character. He would be cast as the helping hand to the ‘relatable’ hero, put there to provide laughter when things got tense, wise words when things got rocky, and hi-fives when things turned out well for them, but his own aspirations, fears, goals and longings for companionship would never be considered. You can tell a lot about a person by the characters they identify with the most, especially when they’re not the ones you’re supposed to feel represented by.

In this production, Owen’s story of the sidekick is brought to life in some dazzling animation sequences by the team of Matthieu Betard, Olivier Lescot and Philippe Sonrier. I can easily imagine just how excited Owen must have been to get that rare opportunity of seeing his childhood fantasies on screen. Equally, the scenes showing the Disney club he started with his fellow Neurodivergent friends are some of the most moving and satisfying moments in the film.

I am happy to say that Owen has definitely not been made the sidekick in his own story. One of the many benefits of choosing an adult subject for an autism documentary is that you can show them taking their life into their own hands and making it better. Owen turns what used to be his sorry substitute for friends into a way to meet and connect with like-minded people, real people who will always be there for him. It also turns out to be a way for him to meet Jonathan Freeman and Gilbert Godfried, who pay the group a surprise visit and do a live reading of Jafar and Iago, their respective parts in Aladdin.

Of course, the other important opportunity given by Williams’ choice of subject is that of exploring romantic relationships. Owen’s conversations with his girlfriend, Emily, who is also Neurodivergent, sound unhealthily strained. In many ways autistic people can be said to have their own language, and their own way of communicating. This is why an autistic person who is asked to communicate the way non-autistic people do will sound a bit like someone who is speaking in a language that is not their native tongue. It is quite strange that Owen and Emily would feel the need to speak in a neurotypical way when it is just the two of them, but there is obviously a force of habit at play.

It is interesting that Life, Animated focuses quite a lot on the movie Peter Pan, seeing as there is this tendency view autistic people as children who never grow up, just like the lost boys. Certainly, on the surface, people like Emily and Owen might sound and look like children, but it is hard to know whether that is just the way they naturally carry themselves, or whether it is because they are usually spoken to as if they were children, which leads them to think that that is how other people like to be spoken to. In this manner, a lot of the medical and clinical studies of autism are very chicken and egg.

The only trap of infantilisation that this film really falls into is its suggestion that Owen basically doesn'tknow what sex is. Sex is another thing that can be especially complicated for autistic people, but, unlike friendships at school, it is surprisingly easy, at least to a certain point, to convince yourself that it doesn't exist (after all, non-autistic people pretend that's true all the time when they talk to each other). His older brother and close mentor thinks that Owen actually doesn't understand it at all, mostly because he could never have learned it from watching Disney and because Owen's been very unresponsive any time he's brought it up. However, just because he doesn't like to talk it about with his brother, or on camera (which is far enough) doesn't mean he knows nothing about it.

Nevertheless, Williams does give Owen ample opportunity to speak for himself on camera, and also to express himself through his impressive illustrations, as well as, of course, his favourite Disney scenes. He rounds off the film with some footage of Owen opening an international autism conference: a powerful reflection of the social progress of the past several decades. I can certainly understand how strange it must have felt, to be a 23-year-old who has fast-tracked their way to the big time thanks to their exotic brain. Unsurprisingly, Owen finds it hard to pen down everything he has to share into just one little speech, and asks his father, Ron, what he should say. Ron tells him that it is all up to him, that it's his story to tell, which is ironic, considering this film is technically based on the book that he wrote about his son's life with autism. Even so, by the time he is able to stand up there and present himself as a proudly autistic adult, his family has finally realised that he is not a lost boy, he is a man who has found himself.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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