The Rea­son I Jump

Nao­ki Higashida’s 2007 mem­oir ​‘The Rea­son I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thir­teen-Year-Old Boy with Autism’ was embraced by par­ents of non-ver­bal neu­ro­di­verse chil­dren as a way of bridg­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap between them. This poet­ic doc­u­men­tary adap­ta­tion from direc­tor Jer­ry Roth­well acts as a visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment, a means of espous­ing the same ideas in a more wide­ly acces­si­ble but still impres­sive­ly craft­ed form.

Excerpts from David Mitchell and KA Yoshida’s Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Higashida’s book (nar­rat­ed by Jor­dan O’Donegan) are played, along with Mitchell’s talk­ing head tes­ti­mo­ny as the par­ent of an autis­tic child, over sequences of a young boy rep­re­sent­ing Higashi­da (Jim Fuji­wara) embark­ing on a jour­ney. This acts as a visu­al metaphor for the book’s fic­tion­al nar­ra­tive, and is inter­cut with the sto­ries of five non-ver­bal autis­tic peo­ple, each of whom illus­trate a dif­fer­ent point about the con­di­tion that neu­rotyp­i­cal audi­ences may be unaware of.

Among them are two young adults in Vir­ginia, Ben­jamin McGann and Emma Bud­way, who relay their per­son­al thoughts through an alpha­bet board, as well as Amrit Khu­rana, an artist from Noi­da who has found suc­cess in express­ing her­self through line draw­ings, and Jesti­na Penn-Tim­i­ty, a girl liv­ing in Sier­ra Leone where being autis­tic car­ries a hor­ri­ble social stig­ma. (Jestina’s moth­er grave­ly admits at one point, ​“Kids like ours, if they’re alive they’re the lucky ones”.)

As an autis­tic per­son, there are sec­tions which almost play out like uncom­fort­able reminders of ear­ly child­hood mem­o­ries. In one scene we see anoth­er par­tic­i­pant, Joss Dear, fall into a brief fit of aggres­sion out of frus­tra­tion from being unable to artic­u­late himself.

The film’s pal­pa­ble impact is height­ened by Rothwell’s sen­so­ry approach. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ruben Wood­in Dechamps employs tight close-up to empha­sise how autis­tic peo­ple like me per­ceive things from an ear­ly age. Nick Ryan’s bin­au­r­al sound design also adds to the immer­sion, call­ing to mind the work of sound design­ers such as Paul Davies and John­nie Burn in its effectiveness.

At one point, McGann remarks, via a trans­la­tor, ​“I think we can change the con­ver­sa­tion around autism by being part of the con­ver­sa­tion”. While this is ulti­mate­ly a film designed for neu­rotyp­i­cal audi­ences – the inten­si­ty of Ryan’s sound design may prove over­whelm­ing to neu­ro­di­verse indi­vid­u­als sus­cep­ti­ble to loud audio stim­uli – I find myself com­ing back to that state­ment. Accord­ing to a recent study, dis­abled cre­atives account for just sev­en per cent of British fea­ture film projects accept­ed for devel­op­ment funding.

This is, of course, no fault of Rothwell’s deeply empa­thet­ic and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing film­mak­ing. It’s a fact that remains worth address­ing and one I hope films like The Rea­son I Jump might be able to chal­lenge. The exam­ples it pro­vides of autis­tic indi­vid­u­als func­tion­ing with­in an under­stand­ing sup­port net­work dis­pel the notion that we are inca­pable of telling our own stories.