Just curious what disability everyone thinks that Reuban has? (I'm watching the movie now, so apologies if they say it from mid to ending) In the movie (from what I have seen so far) all they say he is defective. Too me he seems to have mild Autism or moderate Asperger Syndrome with a moderate speech impediment. What do you all think?
Sander
Straight, but NOT Narrow Minded
I'm not sure (also have only seen the last half or so of the movie). I've read that the only children in the movie not played by actually "disabled" (for lack of a better term) children were Reuben and the little kid played by Billy Mumy. I also thought maybe some kind of autism. But I also felt it was a situation for good old suspension of disbelief, and imagined him with perhaps a worse condition than is apparent, because of the actor being unimpaired, in the same way we literally see a fat, 50-something soprano as the heroine in an opera, and accept her as a beautiful, svelte, 16-year-old (not that fat people cannot be beautiful; they most certainly can be). Anyway, a very touching movie.
Ciocio--Gay, but NOT always merry.
Having a child with high-functioning autism/Asperger's, I think that could be the disablity Rueben had. His mom had tried regular kindergarten for him. He probably was very intelligent. Asperger kids are. Just social misfits, not understanding social cues, how to interact with these peers. I think the football scene when he ran away says that because the other boys didn't think he was "retarded". They thought he was normal but very obvious didn't know anything about football.
shareMy son was diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 20. Believe me, his childhood, well he was nothing like Reuben. He passed for normal. He went to college. I think Reuben was emotionally disturbed. Just my opinion.
shareRegarding Ruben, I agree. I feel he may have been Emotionally Disturbed. I've worked with students with Asperger's and he did not remind me of them. I have a son who is considered between Trainable and Educable Mentally Handicapped, and Ruben does not remind me of him as well.
¤¤ Shared dreams are shared smiles ¤¤
You'll have to forgive me, because it's been a while since I've seen this movie, but I remember watching it on tv as a boy, probably around Reuben's age, and I could have sworn there was a sequence in there that hinted that part of Reuben's problem might have been undetected hearing loss that was misdiagnosed as an intellectual disability.
shareI thought it might of been autism.
shareNetflix thinks it's autism too, so I sat through the film waiting for that fact to be revealed. When Reuben seemed to get all the answers right on the intelligence test (in so far as it was shown) I was astounded by the mental retardation diagnosis. I figured that the Judy Garland character would be the one to discover how bright Reuben really was. Not so. The "moral" of the story turned out to be that the doctor, with his no-coddling philosophy, was right after all.
Since the film never challenges the assumption of the MR diagnosis, I think we were meant to believe it was correct. Yet the story and the acting leave the modern viewer wondering. Like others that have written, Reuben seemed more emotionally disturbed or autistic than retarded to me. I tried to understand our confusion in the context of the time the film was written, but I lived during that time and I still don't get it. I have to conclude it's a flaw in a film that was otherwise, ahead of its time.
Marcia
"Oh Mr. Van Damm, you are Jewish." Judi Dench as Laura Henderson in Mrs Henderson Presents.
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Burt Lancaster's character Dr. Clark mentions in the film that he is "borderline", so all the times I have watched this film I thought that he had suffered from a borderline mental retardation case.
At the same time he does have emotional problems, most likely brought on by his parents abandoning him pretty much.
He propably was autistic and emotionally disturbed, he didn't seem retarded but at that time autism was the same as retarded. Okay he is propably supposed to be retarded somehow but I'm just wondering how can a retarded Child be so stubborn as he was specially as he seemed to know what he was doing, seemd more autistic than retarded.
share