Personally I didn't have any kind of emotional reaction to the movie up until that last scene in the Chinese restaurant and his momma explained love to him in a mathematical sense.
I was like..... "damn... that is so true.... and how the heck did is momma get smart all of a sudden.."?
I' agree however Asa's character shouldn't have just switched to all of a sudden being caring, loving and understanding emotion. It was too much of a flip and autism doesn't work like that in real life. I don't think it was truly meant to come off as such a turn around but that's how it felt and I really think the ending let down what otherwise was a brilliant film.
shareI don't think he switched all of a sudden and I don't think he was supposed to be "cured" so much as having cleared an important hurdle of relating to someone. But, yes, it was done too quickly but the movie need to move toward closure which it did nicely. And Nathan did still appear to be Nathan.
We've all seen enough really, really bad attempts at actors playing persons with autism or other conditions, that my hat goes off to both the young Nathan and the older Nathan for being pretty convincing.
I think he was also suffering from PTSD from the accident. He was able to take some big steps in moving beyond that with all of the new people and things he experienced.
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