Seen and heard

Two excellent documentaries in U.S. theaters this summer spotlight people who, these films suggest, deserve more of our respect and attention: the elderly, and those with autism.

Owen Suskind, the subject of the documentary Life, Animated, in theaters July 1, seemed like a normal child when he was born. But as a young boy, he stopped talking. His parents spent desperate years trying to understand what happened to their silent son, whom doctors diagnosed with autism.

One thing the boy loved: watching Disney animated movies. The documentarians show clips from Owen’s favorite Disney movies, like the Peter Pan sword fight Owen re-enacts as a young boy before he loses his speech.

Years passed, then something strange happened. Owen’s father Ron heard his son mumbling and discovered he was saying a line from The Little Mermaid. (I won’t spoil the story by revealing the line—but it shows how incredibly perceptive the boy was despite his silence.) This led to the realization that Owen had memorized every Disney movie and could use that dialogue to communicate with his family.

Ron Suskind was a Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter. His wife Cornelia also is a former reporter, and like good journalists they kept track of their son’s story with home videos. Some may already know Owen’s story from Ron Suskind’s best-selling book Life, Animated.

The story shows the incredible nature of the brain even with a disability and shows the use of art to solve medically unexplainable problems. As a grown man, Owen now speaks, though sometimes with difficulty. He is working on his own cartoon story, made up of characters he calls “sidekicks”—the less-recognized characters in films who are essential to the hero’s success. The parallel is easy to see—this disabled man is essential to those around him.

One side note: Owen’s loyal brother Walter briefly tries to educate his grown brother about sex, but Owen is mostly uninterested. That moment aside, this documentary is family friendly, moving, and very well done.

Owen’s dad asks: “Who decides what a meaningful life is?”

ANOTHER LOVELY DOCUMENTARY, My Love, Don’t Cross That River, is about an elderly Korean couple living out their final year together. The film opened in select U.S. theaters June 17. The roomful of stodgy New York film critics exiting a screening with puffy eyes and tear-stained faces showed how unusual this film is.

My Love, Don’t Cross That River was a box office smash in South Korea, becoming the highest-grossing independent Korean movie ever. Perhaps it hit a nerve in a society where the elderly are often forgotten and alone. That forgetfulness isn’t unique to Korea.

Married when they were young through a family arrangement, the film’s 98-year-old husband and 89-year-old wife have experienced war and poverty and the loss of children. Now they are alone together, living in a remote area. The husband gathers and carries stacks of wood on his back while the wife cracks that he used to be strong. She often asks him to sing to her. The film can be a little saccharine in its editing and use of music, but the sweetness between the couple is genuine.

This documentary captures the union and self-giving nature of marriage because the camera is always present—when the couple falls asleep, and when the husband wakes up with a hacking cough in the night. The film doesn’t spend much time on the couple’s religious beliefs, but they allude to a vague afterlife, and the wife burns clothes for them to wear there.

In their rare visits, the couple’s children squabble over helping them. Likely all who see this film will leave with a desire to spend more time with aging parents or the elderly—not just out of a sense of shame, but because of what you might be missing.