Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

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 wa