The opening shot of Rain Man sets the film firmly in the 1980s with consumer culture and excess. We see a lavish, very expensive sports car being lowered by a crane into the streets of Los Angeles. These Lamborghinis are part of a grey market import being arranged by the arrogant collectibles dealer, Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise), and are our first glimpse into the kind of man he is and the journey he will be taking during this film. This is a man who has overreached and put himself in a desperate situation in the pursuit of money and is going to have to learn that there are more important things than money. But that lesson is going to be a hard one for such as him. Poor planning on his part and a hold-up because of California emission laws, has put his entire investment into these vehicles in danger.
What sets the plot off is the sudden death of his estranged father and the reading of the will. Charlie left home after a particularly volatile argument with his father and never got in touch with him again. In the will, his entire estate has been put into a trust for one individual, minus the car that was the catalyst for their final argument, and some prized rose bushes. This estate, valued at $3 million, comes as yet another slap in the face to Charlie, and he is determined to find out who it was given to. This eventually leads him to Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), an older brother he didn’t know he even had. Raymond is a high-functioning autistic who is being kept in a mental institution in Cincinnati.
Raymond is referred to as an autistic savant, a man who has amazing mental capabilities such as the ability to memorize minute details instantly or do complex mathematical equations in his head, but he needs extreme structure in his life and is susceptible to emotional distress. Charlie, determined to get his half of the inheritance, takes Raymond out of the institution, intending to take him back to Los Angeles until the institution, which is the trustee for the money, gives him his half.
What follows is both predictable and emotionally manipulative at the same time. Charlie is far too arrogant a protagonist to remain as such for the duration of the movie. But we do have to ask ourselves early on if it is even possible for anyone, especially someone like him, to have a relationship with someone like Raymond. This question is not meant to be offensive or demeaning to the autistic but a genuine question about these two. Raymond is capable of quite a bit, but he is emotionally shut off unless his routine is disrupted, and then he loses control. Even when there’s a glimmer of breaking through, it’s just that, a glimmer, nothing more. No matter how close Charlie thinks he is getting to Raymond, he has to realize that if he steps too far off the path of routine, Raymond gets emotionally distressed.
Charlie is equally emotionally stunted, too. He has been harboring anger for his father for years and initially sees Raymond as an extension of that. When we are first introduced to him, he is with his girlfriend, Susanna (Valeria Golino). She puts up with him for a while, but once he takes Raymond away, even she cannot stay by his side and leaves the two. She sees exactly what Charlie is doing, why he is doing it, and cannot stay by him while he essentially is kidnapping his brother. Some lip service is given that Raymond is voluntarily in the institute to lessen the illegality of what Charlie is doing, but it still feels like kidnapping.
This is further exacerbated by Charlie’s initial frustrations with dealing with Raymond, which borders on abuse on occasion. This could easily be overplayed to the point of us hating Charlie, especially early on. This is where casting comes into play. By putting Tom Cruise in this role, it gets to play up his off-screen persona a bit. This is a troubling thought when you boil it down because it means we as an audience can overlook bad behavior in our celebrities if we have an affinity for them. We see that with the likes of Kevin Spacey, who still has many devout followers who feel bad for what happened to his career after he was accused of rape of a minor. We also see that with someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, who is teased about how his girlfriends age out of that role in their mid-twenties despite him being in his fifties. If we love the celebrity, we can overlook nearly anything. That is being played up here when we see Tom Cruise grabbing Dustin Hoffman’s neck and hurting him. We cringe at the abuse, but not for too long.
Of course, if things stayed that way, eventually, we would completely turn on Charlie as a character, but we instinctually know that this is a film about a journey, and not just a physical one. This is a journey involving limitations on the part of both him and Raymond. Charlie’s limitation is that of his inability to love those in his life. When Susanna leaves him, it doesn’t initially affect him in any meaningful way. When he finds out about Raymond, he initially only sees him as a door keeping him from his father’s money. Unable to take him on a flight home, thanks to Raymond’s perfect memory of every airline’s most recent crashes, Charlie must take him on a cross-country drive back to L.A. Thus, this film becomes a road movie, a formula that is about as old as movies themselves. Yet it works not just in spite of the familiarity of the structure but because of it.
The more that Charlie has to take care of Raymond, the more empathy and humanity he finds within himself. This is not something that comes easily to him, and it develops slowly as the story unfolds, but we catch glimpses of it here and there early on. Charlie is not a monster; he’s just an angry individual who has a lot of repressed emotions that he has to work through. Taking care of Raymond and discovering things about his past in the process helps him come to terms with those emotions.
Dustin Hoffman is the standout performer here, of course. Hoffman spent the year prior to filming seeking out and educating himself on other autistic people, specifically those with savant syndrome. He also fell back on his experiences from working at the New York Psychiatric Institute when he was younger. Through all of this, he crafted one of the great on-screen characters and a true showcase of talent and dedication. This is not an easy character to get right, and it is far too easy to fall into parody, yet we are never laughing at Raymond.
Rain Man would go on to dominate at the Academy Awards, earning 8 nominations, winning 4 of them. Notably absent, though, is Tom Cruise, himself. Over the years, Tom Cruise has come close several times to winning an Oscar and has always ended up getting overlooked. He was nominated three times for his acting, all very worthy films, yet never did win one. Finally, in 2026, he was honored with an Academy Honorary Award for his contribution to the movie industry. While not a competitive Oscar, it is the Academy recognizing his body of work over a long period of time.
He should have been nominated for Rain Man, though. His character change is believable, and the emotional heft is on his shoulders. We don’t get the powerful film we have without the combined efforts of Cruise and Hoffman. This film would also suffer had it ended with a typical Hollywood clichéd ending rather than staying true to the realities of the situation. It’s better written than that, which is one of the many reasons this film resonated so much in the hearts of filmgoers back in 1988 and made this an enduring classic to this day.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Mark Johnson (won)
Best Director: Barry Levinson (won)
Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman (won)
Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow (won)
Best Art Direction: Ida Random and Linda DeScenna
Best Cinematography: John Seale
Best Film Editing: Stu Linder
Best Original Score: Hans Zimmer
____________________________________________________
Release Date: December 16, 1988
Running Time: 134 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, and Valeria Golino
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Comments
Post a Comment