Rain Man

Rain Man, a film about an exceptional person, portrays the life of Raymond Babbot and his struggle to be understood and loved by his brother Charlie Babbot. This academy award-winning drama stars two incredibly talented actors - Tom Cruise (Charlie) and Dustin Hoffman (Raymond). These two brothers, separated at a young age by Raymond’s exceptional condition, find themselves later in life brought together by their father’s death. The movie grabs the heart of it’s audience in an attempt to bring together the life of the “exceptional” person with that of the “normal” mainstream life. The Rain Man drama begins with a young man (Charlie) sorting through his acceptance with his father’s death, or shall I say basically waiting to find out exactly what his inheritance may be. The Babbot family never really had a history of “togetherness” as Charlie and Raymond’s mother lost her life at their young age and while Charlie was three Raymond was sent off to WallBrook, a facility meeting the needs of exceptional people. As the inheritance is read to Charlie, he finds himself left with only a Buick convertible and a rose bush, while the rest of his father’s $3.5 million estate was left to a trustee (a director at the WallBrook facilities). Distraught with the idea that someone else has the money that Charlie needs, he heads off to meet with the trustee at WallBrook. Once there, Charlie Babbot finds himself not helped at all and upon leaving meets the genius of Dustin Hoffman (Raymond Babbot), which begins the story of Rain Man. Raymond Babbot is what is known as an autistic-savant, or also referred to as an idiot-savant. This is a problem usually categorized by a problem with communicating, learning, and expression of one’s self. Raymond has an extensive routine which he follows daily from the times of television shows he watches, to bed times, to food he eats, to the exact arrangement of his room. Anything interfering with this exact routine makes Raymond extremely nervous. He also has trouble making decisions with the repeated line “I don’t know.” Though Charlie first thinks Raymond to be stupid, retarded, and a complete idiot, he later finds Raymond to be an utter genius with numbers and statistics - basically anything to do with order and arrangement. Excited about having a brother and the opportunity to get the money left by his dad, Charlie kidnaps Raymond from WallBrook. Very quickly Charlie gets disgusted with Raymond and unwilling to accept that he doesn’t understand some things. Because of this and the fact that Charlie has such an inability to understand others because of his own selfishness., Charlie’s girlfriend leaves him. Then begins Charlie and Raymond’s infamous trip to California. This part is where I believe the author is intending to introduce inclusion of exceptional people into the mainstream, normal life. All of the sudden Raymond is thrown unexpectedly into everyday situations. Immediately Charlie begins to find out just what a tremendous schedule and time frame Raymond must be on. This is very evident in Raymond’s need to watch television shows such as “The Peoples’ Court” and “Jeopardy” and also with the exact food schedule coordinated by the days of the week. Raymond is very set in his ways which bring Charlie to a heated height. For example: just as they are about to board a plane, Raymond starts blurting out all of these statistics about plane crashes and how unsafe it is to fly. Then later refuses to go out when