Freely adapted from the 2007 bestselling book “The Reason I Jump,” written by Higashida Naoki, a nonspeaking autistic child, Jerry Rothwell’s film of the same name is an empathetic, though perhaps uncritical, look at the interior lives of children living with autism. “The Reason I Jump” follows five families that span the globe, overlaid with Higashida’s words, which speak to the universality of these children’s experiences. While Rothwell’s film strives to mimic these children’s subjective experiences, utilizing sound design and impressionistic cinematography, the results often fall between aphorism and insight. Anyone looking for a sensitive view into life with autism will find “The Reason I Jump” to be a perceptive exploration. However, the film never really digs into its source material, or subjects, with any real depth.
Beginning with a fictional Higashida walking around in a hazy, dreamlike state, Rothwell cross-cuts between several families, including Amrit, who lives in India and has turned to drawing and painting as a method of artistic impression. The film then moves to America, following Joss, son of two of the film’s producers, and Ben and Emma, in Virginia, who have formed a close friendship because of their disability. Finally, Rothwell moves to Sierra Leone, showcasing Jestina, and her marginalization at the hands of a society that doesn’t fully grasp autism.
At the heart of Higashida and Rothwell’s narrative is novelist/screenwriter David Mitchell, perhaps most famous for writing “Cloud Atlas.” Having an autistic son, Mitchell and his wife, KA Yoshida, translated Higashida’s book, vaulting it to a must-having for parents of children with autism. Mitchell is omnipresent throughout the film, acting as a guide through Higashida’s words and the implications of these thoughts on all children diagnosed with autism. While Higashida wrote his book as a subjective portrait of his own struggles, Mitchell, and by extension Rothwell, highlight his writing’s universality, trading any type of differentiation between the film’s subject and, instead, highlighting their collective interiority. Where “The Reason I Jump” notes differences, it’s often in societal acceptance, and understanding, of autism. Yet even those differences are often pushed into the background.
However, Rothwell wisely chooses to use Higashida’s text as a starting point, opening up Higashida’s insular worldview to explore the connections between subjects. The book, which is both a bestseller and a source of debate about the role of authorship, as Higashida’s mother utilized the contested method of facilitated communication to allow Higashida to write, utilizes a Q and A methodology to explore Higashida’s interior self. These answers, Rothwell and Mitchell contend, help provide the key to the puzzling nature of autism, showcasing a robust interior self that is often hidden by the disability. Often, the film uses the writing as voiceover, tangibly drawing connections between subjects.
Using the memoir as a type of Rosetta Stone is at the heart of the debate about the merits of Higashida’s text, which never sought to become the type of urtext that Mitchell and Rothwell contend it is. Yet these debates are extratextual, as the film is more interested in the connective tissue amongst these subjects than anything that might contrast them. Often the film trades critical understanding for generality, which makes for an affecting, if still somewhat superficial, showcase. Despite this, “The Reason I Jump is a rewarding watch that attempts to give insight into the interior lives of those living with autism. [B-].