Rain Man (1988; Guber-Peters Company Production, United Artists) helped to launch the career of one of Hollywood’s most prestigious film composers (and, incidentally, my absolute favorite), Hans Zimmer. While Zimmer didn’t win an Oscar for his score for Rain Man, the film’s Best Picture victory put Zimmer on the musical map, so to speak. When he followed Rain Man‘s success with that of next week’s BP Driving Miss Daisy, Zimmer was well on his way and only had to wait a couple more years before he was awarded a shiny golden man for his work on the iconic score of The Lion King (1995). Since then, Zimmer has racked up tons of awards and nominations for his brilliant scores for films such as Gladiator (2000), Pearl Harbor (2001), The Last Samurai (2003), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017). And who can’t hum along with his instantly recognizable themes from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise? If you can’t do this yet, you must obtain these soundtracks ASAP. Particularly, “I Don’t Think Now is the Best Time” (slightly cheesy name for one of the best pieces of film music ever written, in my opinion) from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is simply a stunner.

While I could go on all day about Hans Zimmer and his contributions to the film world, I’ll try to rein in my gushing enthusiasm and turn back to Rain Man, which received eight Academy Award nominations. The film won four Oscars: Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen), Directing for Barry Levinson, Actor in a Leading Role for Dustin Hoffman for his unforgettable performance as Raymond Babbitt, and Best Picture. The film failed to score wins for Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Music (Original Score)–but no worries there; Zimmer had better material coming later (tried to steer away from him, but there he is again…).

One particularly noteworthy contribution to culture and society that Rain Man made was to raise awareness for autism. As an “autistic savant,” Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt is both alarmingly brilliant and endlessly frustrating to his brother Charlie. We’ll look at that relationship more this weekend, but for now it’s important to note just how groundbreaking it was for a mainstream, award-winning film to revolve around an autistic character. In 1988, most people didn’t know what it meant to be autistic–and perhaps had not even heard the term before. Children with autism often went misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, experiencing difficulties in school and struggling with peer relationships. In some circles, these children are referred to as “the lost generation,” sufferers from autism prior to it becoming a common diagnosis. For some first-hand experiences of a few of these children, check out this article from the Interactive Autism Network: https://iancommunity.org/lost-generation-growing-up-autism-before-epidemic.

On a positive note, then, the popularity of Rain Man led to increased diagnoses of autism and opened the door for more (and deeper) conversations about this disorder. On the other hand, though, Rain Man also created an autism stereotype. Karl Knights explains, “As a beginning for autism on screen, Rain Man deserves applause. It gave autistic people a visibility that had previously been denied them. In one fell swoop Rain Man achieved almost overnight the kind of representation that parent advocacy groups had been working towards for decades. But as the dominant depiction of autism on screen, it also deserves derision. The autistic community is more than Raymond Babbitt.” If you want to read more of Knights’ thoughts on this film and autism, check out this article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/17/rain-man-myth-autistic-people-dustin-hoffman-savant.

And, if you want to read more of my thoughts on Rain Man and its significance, please check out this weekend’s post!