Snow Cake

2010_9_26 Autism Revisited
Week ago I wrote about the film “Temple Grandin,” the autistic woman whose ideas have had an impact on how cattlemen handle and treat cows; indeed, the media tagged her, “the woman who thinks like a cow.” That was literally true, because she based all her ideas on pure observation of the behavior of cows, how they more in a pack and where they are in terms of moods and, yes, feelings. She became something of a celebrity and appeared on programs as Larry King Live and C-Span, where she was interviewed for three hours. Her tag line was always the same: ANIMMALS ARE NOT THINGS. She wasn’t a vegetarian or anything like that; she just believed we didn’t have to be so cruel and thoughtless while dealing with them. She has three degrees, with the final one a PHD from the University of Illinois. Currently she is a professor at Colorado State. She also has become a spokesperson for autism, always on demand as a speaking. She is unmarried and 63 years old.

As it happened I had found a fictional movie made in Canada called “Snow Cake,” that dealt with the subject of Autism, so I ordered it through NETFLIX. The movie opened without a clue as to where it was headed. Alex Hughes (Allan Rickman) is on his way to seeing an old friend in Winnipeg, Canada, after getting out of prison for killing someone, accidentally it turns out, but he nonetheless had to serve six years in prison. A second tragedy in his life had to do with the death of his son, a teenage boy, who was killed in an auto accident when going to meet his father for the first time. Alex is definitely a man grim around the edges and in desperate need of rejuvenation. Then, when he stops for a bite to eat, a young woman sits down at his table, strikes up a conversation, and eventually asks him for a ride to Wawa, a small town on the way to Winnipeg where her mother lives. Her name is Vivienne Freeman (Emily Hampshire) and her personality is odd, somewhat eccentric, but she’s lively and interesting so he takes her with him. Everything is going along swimmingly until they are near Wawa when all of a sudden their car is plowed into by a truck, a 16 wheeler, killing Vivienne. Alex emerges with barely a scratch but devastated that fate has slapped him with more bad karma that he didn’t need. Feeling guilty even though he wasn’t responsible for Vivienne’s death, he decides to find her mother and explain what happen and say he was sorry. He has no idea what he was going to encounter.

Linda Freeman (Sigourney Weaver) is at first an immediate puzzle and impenetrable; he knows she is odd and full of psychological quirks and physical tics and difficult to deal with. He can’t believe how unmoved she is on hearing her daughter was dead. She reacts as if her death was the same thing as a storm passing to the east of Wawa. But having seen “Temple Grandin” I realize that many Autistic people don’t like to be touched or intimate or even socialize. Temple drives her mother nuts because she can’t allow her mother to embrace her, and at one point she admits having a relationship is out of the question for her. “It is something I’ll never know” she tells her mother. This emotional distance from normal affection and needs is at the center of Linda’s personality. (Her father tells Alex she must have been raped to get pregnant, like she did.) She misses Vivienne in her fashion, but its cool and matter of fact. However, she invites Alex to stay to help her handle the next few days—and to take the garbage out, something she insists she can’t do. Nor can he enter her kitchen, and she freaks out when he does. And when the dog vomits on the floor her response is way out of proportion—but that’s how she is and there is nothing to do but accept it—and pick up the vomit. Slowly, an off-beat friendship eventually develops between them, as he learns how to deal with autism and her peculiar ways and reactions.

When he meets the attractive divorcee next door, Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss) the two are immediately attracted to each other and soon end up in the sack together. After six years in prison, it was both a tonic and a joyful transcendence for Alex, and they carry on a short but happy affair, and laugh at Linda’s comment that Maggie is a prostitute. When Alex does move on it is Maggie who takes over the job of taking the garbage out, something Alex no doubt arranged. He leaves renewed, with the sun in his face, and ready to live again. Linda by being herself and Maggie by reawakening his senses and affections centers did him a great service as he drives on to meet the woman who was the mother of his son. His stop in Wawa was more than he could have anticipated and he thanks the Universe for bringing him to these two ladies.

The chemistry between Weaver and Rickman was very good. It was subtle, solid, and believable. Stephen Holden of the New York Times saw the story as cloying and banal, a calculated use of a mentally challenged person as a kind of Prince Myshkin, a holy innocent who moves and improves others by her “curse of saintliness.” That is a wrongheaded reading of the story, making the movie more calculating and designedly sentimental than it is. Linda is who she is, an autistic woman, and Weaver plays her straight up, with no inner designs on anybody, because she is compulsive about her own reality which seems to keeps her quite self-centered and preoccupied. The effect she has on Alex is a by-product of who she is—period. I never saw her as saintly; as admirable, yes, mostly because she knew who and what she was and how to stay within her own limits, such as they were. Temple Grandin was the same way.

Maggie was there to awaken in him what Linda could not awaken: his sensual self and his capacity for love and affection based on touch. It was as if Linda was the sun and Maggie was the moon, and it was the combination that made him feel complete and able to face whatever might be ahead.

The film had a lovely poetic ending which also explained why the film was called “Snow Cake.” There is a scene in the film where Linda lays in the snow and eats a lot of snow which she enjoys doing. When Alex leaves he tells her he left her a gift which is in the freezer. Later, when she opens the freezer she finds a large cake made of snow with small snowballs on top. She is delighted and immediately cuts a piece and eats it, which is end of story.