Rain Man
This review is a part of the Best Picture Project: a review of every single Academy Award winner for the Best Picture category. Rain Man is the sixty first Best Picture winner at the 1988 Academy Awards.
My deal with road films is that the less-than-perfect kind are excuses to have familiar faces planted in a car and just experiencing stuff. The best road stories show significant changes in these characters, like a scrutinizing sort of study. Rain Man is a good-enough road film, whose ‘80s emotional narrative methods work in its favour (enough to have won audiences over, anyway). In reality, is there much outside of Charlie Babbitt’s change-of-heart, or his brother Ray’s astonishing gifts? Not really. The entire film is about Charlie figuring out his asshole-ish ways through Ray (in a number of ways, some of which are potential spoilers). Barry Levinson has always had an affinity for the just-enough types of films, where heart strings can be pulled, and that’s all that needs to happen; often, complexity is left at the door.
In a few days from today, it will already have been ten years since Kim Peek passed away (December 19th, 2009). As the influence for the story of Rain Man (particularly the character of Ray), Peek was a real world wonder that showcased the abstract ways a human mind can work around shortcomings. One of pop culture’s biggest savant figures, Peek’s story was just the fact that he existed, because of the intellectual marvels he pulled off every day (these include memorizing any forms of text, being able to read two pages at the same time, and other incredible feats). Rain Man tries to make a bit of a story on such a person, but it ultimately knows that it’s the person that makes the whole. Thus, it steps back, gives a reason for Ray Babbitt to exist in cinema, a bit of a story for Ray to go about with, and that’s it.
Ray and Charlie slowly bond throughout the film, as can be expected.
Rain Man is extremely standard “I was a greedy, angry man but now I am different” fare. While the strong acting and subject matter are guaranteed to yank your collar, everything else is simply there to fill out the film. I can see why this won Best Picture. The Academy was warming up to super-safe Hallmark films around this time, and onward. Rain Man is a better example of one of these works (just wait until tomorrow if you want to see less-than-stellar), but that doesn’t make it anything more than a touching character study. That’s totally fine. It has a place in the hearts of many viewers, even if your mind won’t be picked in any single way.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.