Rain Man, 1988.
Directed by Barry Levinson.
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, and Jerry Molen.
SYNOPSIS:
Rain Man, winner of four Academy Awards, arrives on 4K Ultra HD, with the film and bonus features included on a Blu-ray disc too. The movie looks sharp, and while MVD didn’t commission any new extras for this 35th anniversary edition, what’s included here gives a pretty thorough look into the making of the film.
I was intrigued by the opportunity to revisit Rain Man, in light of the fact that I have a teenage son who was diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder, as it’s known these day) a decade ago. To answer a question some readers may have: No, my son doesn’t act like Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt, although there are some minor behavioral similarities.
That’s because autism falls along a spectrum, which means you can’t take a “one size fits all” approach to people who have been diagnosed with ASD. So while Rain Man helped make more people aware of autism, it also made a lot of people think that Raymond Babbitt is a stand-in for the phenomenon, especially since he is an autistic savant, which is a rare form of autism.
Of course, it’s not a movie’s job to educate the public, so let’s move on to this new 4K Ultra HD release of the film from MVD Marquee Collection. It remains a classic, and rightly so, because it gave us a character — Tom Cruise’s Charlie Babbitt — who was a student from Gordon Gekko’s 1980s era “Greed is good” school but had to learn that money isn’t the most important thing in life.
Sure, that core message is a bit schmaltzy, but it’s a timeless one. We’re introduced to Babbitt as he tries desperately to close deals on imported luxury cars that have been held up by inspections. When his estranged father dies, he takes what he thinks will be a quick trip home with his girlfriend, Susanna (Valeria Golino), to make a perfunctory appearance at the funeral and attend a reading of the will.
He’s not surprised that his father didn’t leave him much, but he’s angered to learn that $3 million was left to a nameless person in an institution. Charlie uses his deal-making skills to talk his way into getting more information and visits that place, where he discovers he has a brother he never knew about.
At first, Charlie thinks he will essentially kidnap Raymond and hold onto him until the doctor managing his brother’s inheritance gives him half the money. (Raymond is voluntarily living in the institution, so the police can’t get involved.) However, he quickly becomes frustrated with Raymond’s rigid approach to life, which includes everything from refusing to fly because of his encyclopedic knowledge of airline accidents to his insistence that he can only buy underwear at a specific Kmart in Ohio.
When Charlie discovers Raymond’s prodigious mathematical skills, however, he decides they’ll stop in Las Vegas to win some much-needed cash by counting cards at a blackjack table. Unsurprisingly, the story leads Charlie to eventually gain a greater understanding of who Raymond is and decide that he should sue the institution for custody of his brother.
This new edition of the film features a new 4K restoration approved by director Barry Levinson. It’s not one of those movies that people are necessarily clamoring for on 4K, since Blu-ray is more than capable of making a film like this look very good on a typical home theater setup, but it’s nice to have a presentation that’s as close as possible to what Rain Man looked like when it opened in theaters in 1988.
No new bonus features were commissioned for this release, but what’s here in terms of legacy extras is enough to get a well-rounded view of the movie, starting with a trio of commentary tracks found on the 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray discs. Levinson and screenwriters Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass each get their own track.
There’s the obvious question of why the three didn’t participate in a joint track — or at least have the screenwriters do one together — but after watching the included 22-minute featurette The Journey of Rain Man, it’s clear that each of them has a specific perspective on the film.
Levinson was the fourth and final director attached to the film, so his point-of-view is of someone who came into the project late but was still able to improve the film, such as by figuring out a way to force the brothers onto more-scenic back roads during their journey.
Morrow was the original writer on the film, so his perspective is of someone who based Raymond Babbitt on two people he knew personally. Meanwhile, when Bass came onto the movie, his goal was to apply a structure to the story without worrying too much about how it fit into what’s known about autism. While Bass could have derailed that part of the movie, autism’s spectrum means that those decisions could be molded around Raymond’s basic rigidity.
That aforementioned featurette serves Levinson and the two screenwriters looking back on the movie, along with a few other folks, and the 20-minute Lifting the Fog: A Look at the Mysteries of Autism stars one of the people Hoffman spent time with while researching his role, along with other ASD folks and some experts. Lifting the Fog is a good primer for anyone curious about the subject.
A deleted scene that wouldn’t have added anything to the film if it had been left in and the theatrical trailer round this one out.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
