‘Ezra’ thrives while exploring what’s best for autistic kids
Bleecker Street
My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist and knows way more than I do about autistic children, the evolving understanding about neurodiversity, and the continuous debate between providing separate education vs. inclusion. So she gets the first word on “Ezra,” in which a comedian named Max (Bobby Cannavale) kidnaps his son Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald) to prevent his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jenna (Rose Byrne, Cannavale’s real-life partner) from allowing Ezra to be moved to a special-needs school:
“The movie brings up a lot of good points in the discussion around neurodiversity and letting autistic people be themselves. It does a good job of identifying the two sides of the issue, which aren’t black and white, and approaching it with a neurodiverse-affirming mindset. My beliefs fall somewhat with Jenna’s thinking and somewhat with Max’s thinking. Placing a neurodiverse student into a class of neurotypical kids isn’t necessarily meaningful inclusion, and eliminating access to their neurotypical peers isn’t ideal either. There’s no one answer to this issue. How about asking Ezra what he wants? Throughout the movie he tries to communicate his needs through his behavior. What isn't recognized is that all behavior is communication, and as the adults working with or raising autistic kids, we are responsible for figuring out what is being communicated. Each autistic individual is just that, an individual, and we should honor their needs, wants, strengths and challenges, just as we would with any other child. We need to let autistic kids be who they are and allow them to thrive in an environment that’s meaningful to them.”
That perspective means much more than mine, which is that “Ezra” brings sensitivity and depth to a complicated issue even when its plotting or characters graze the surface. Directed by Tony Goldwyn (“The Last Kiss”) and written by Tony Spiridakis (who raised an autistic son), the film doesn’t necessarily contain a lot of surprises in its approach to a road movie (Rainn Wilson and Vera Farmiga appear in small parts), and the ending struggles to emotionally resolve Max’s extreme decision. There’s a noticeable strain at times to provide entertainment/laughs with the ideas, and uniformly strong performances (Robert De Niro is great in a substantial role as Max’s father) go a long way to compensate for writing that wobbles despite landing some good points about family miscommunication and challenges that occur on the way to improved understanding.
There are a lot of elements to juggle here, and “Ezra” has trouble figuring out what to do with Max as both hero and rogue, devoted father and occasionally misguided comedian and a man battling his own demons and probably a character who gets a little too much of the attention. But there are a lot of well-considered moments about what support does and doesn’t look like, including Ezra declaring, “I’m not your superhero or mojo or buddy; I’m your son!”
This is a sometimes-funny story about anger, and the difficulty of doing right by kids when adults can make plenty of mistakes themselves. “Ezra” is the sort of movie that can actually teach people something about an issue without being only recommendable as education, which is far from easy and worth the effort.
B
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