The Rain Man

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The Rain Man

The Rain Man stars Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. The movie was made in 1988. The movie is about an autistic man named Raymon, who is a idiot savant played by Dustin Hoffman and his fast, talking self absorbed, egocentric brother Charlie Babbitt, who is played by Tom Cruise. A egocentric person is a person with the simple recognition that every living thing views the world from a unique, self-oriented perspective(LIFE: Inherently Egocentric written by James Craig Green http://pw2.netcom.com/~zeno7/ego.html).

Charlie is a car salesman whose business is going down hill. Charlie and his girlfriend are on their way to Palm Springs when Charlie gets a call from his friend and co-worker. He tells him that his fathers' lawyer has been trying to reach him, because his father was dead and the funeral was the next day. Charlie who never had a good relationship with his father decided to go out there to pay his respects and to go get his share of his fathers estate. When the lawyer read the will, Charlie finds out all he received was his fathers' 1949 Buick and his prized rose bushes. The lawyer says the rest of the estate is going to a beneficiary. Charlie is mad at what his father did. He tries to find out who get everything else, because it is worth about three million dollars. Charlie finds out the name and location of the beneficiary, but does not know anything else. So Charlie goes to Wallbrook institution to find out who this guy is. While he is inside a man comes up to Charlies' car and hops in. He says he drove it just last week. After Charlie asks him a couple of questions he finds out that they are brothers. Charlie's first impression of Raymon is that he is retarded. Charlie decides in order to get his cut of his fathers' money, he will abduct his brother and wait for them to hand him his one and a half million dollars as a ransom because he thinks he deserves it. Charlie takes Raymon from Wallbrook and heads out on the road back to Los Angeles. Charlie tells him if they make it back soon they can go and see a Dodgers game. Charlie's girl friend objects to what Charlie is doing to Raymon and decides to leave him.

The next morning Charlie and Raymon go out for breakfast and Raymon starts to throw a fit when the maple syrup is not on the table before they order. He also wants toothpicks to eat with, not the knife and fork provided. C...

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...ctured and safe. The fact that Raymon is a brilliant idiot savant would be interesting but have little value in his day to day life.

Charlie's portrayal as an egocentric person was also very believable. It was obvious from the beginning of the movie that he viewed everything that happened very personally. He was self-centered and could not think of others. By the end of the movie he learns to think of others including Raymon and he even wants to incorporate Raymon into his everyday life. I think it happened too quickly though, I mean how many people can go from being egocentrical to a person who is at the exact opposite side of how to live life.

Even today autism is not recognized or else it is misunderstood by the public, parents and professionals. This film put a lot of the rumors of autistics and savants to rest. Before this movie not a lot of people had known how you could recognize an autistic person. This film was a really good film. As stated before this film not many people knew much about autistic people. This film opened up the eyes of people to autistics. This was the first film to actually show how autistic people live and how they like to have a daily schedule.

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