Owen Suskind, an autistic child, is completely unable to communicate — totally cut off from the world. Years of therapy and interventions have been fruitless. Until one day, sitting in the kitchen with his father, Owen, out of the blue, makes a reference to Peter Pan, the animated feature film. Mr Suskind startles. He rushes upstairs to his son’s room. There he sees on the floor, beside the bed, a parrot Iago puppet — the character from Aladdin. Since Owen used to see tons of Disney animated films when he was a little boy, Mr. Suskind has a sudden insight. He brings the puppet to his son and starts acting — giving the puppet life, talking like Iago does in the movie…
Sometimes there are miracles. It is as if a doorway was opened to Owen’s mind. The child answers. He enters a conversation which is held within a Disney-like setting — the father playing the part of Iago, imitating his cacophonic voice, in order to keep his child in the exchange, to ask him about his feelings, to get him back to the world.
Mr. Suskind recalls all this while interviewed in the documentary Life, Animated (directed by Roger Ross Williams, written by Ron Suskind adapting his book with the same title).
The Iago scene is the plot point at the end of Act I (let us not forget that documentaries have narrative structures too). What Mr. Suskin remembers telling himself in those moments, while playing Iago, strikes me. He thought: “stay in character”.
I can easily imagine the impulse to let emotions overwhelm you, to be moved, to call Mrs. Suskind and show her, full of joy, what was going on… No, “stay in character”…. It was more important to keep that unexpected doorway open… To force himself to keep doing what had to be done for the sake of Owen.
That to me is pure drama, and this scene from Life, Animated suggests to me a way to define it: the effort to truly stay with the character.
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