Life, Animated Interview and Review

My phone interview with Director Roger Ross Williams on his recent film Life, Animated. The film follows a autistic man, Owen Suskind's, family in his journey to independence and reflects back on his childhood.
(Interview by Wyatt Head)





Life, Animated

This happy and uplifting film shares the story of Owen, who has Autism, from the time he was very young to his young adulthood. We are taken through the family’s trials and first realizations that he had the condition. The camera follows him through his life using animation, interviews, and footage of Owen going to through his current day. Owen gained his tools that he has today through Disney animation. The shots of him viewing the films, which he has thoroughly memorized, brought memorable and magical moments to me as I remembered those films.

The animation used as a sketch 2-D type to tell Owen’s story really was remarkable and pretty. The thick lines and colors added to the animation as if it were a painting brought a sense of adventure to the family’s recollections. They actually in the opening credits took video footage from the family and made it into a sketch. A piece of footage with Owen’s father and him playing in the yard was gripping because his dad didn’t know about his Autism at the time. His father explains that at the age of three Owen just stopped being the Owen they knew.

The film had a great balance between the story of the family’s history and what was going on currently in Owen’s life. Something that was mentioned well was that Autism was an unflattering thing back in the early 90s. That gave you a sense of where the family was at the time of his diagnosis and the work they would have to do. The filmmakers use audio to imitate the garble that Owen now says he heard from everyone when he was young. It was a wonderful way for us as the audience to understand his over stimulation.

There is a segment where the father explains how Owen said something to him for the first time in a year through a puppet. The father spoke through a voice and used a Disney puppet to ask him how his son felt. This is reminisced upon while the father tears up in the interview. One can imagine how emotional and trying it was to just get their son to speak to them. The film made a very clear path towards understanding all of Owen’s needs and breakthroughs.

Owen says it himself that he uses the films to make sense of the world. To watch the sequences of Disney films on the screen is quite an extraordinary thing because for Owen this was his cherished tool. This documentary supported the growth of Autism awareness and made animation more aesthetic than ever.
(Review by Wyatt Head)