Roger Ross Williams on 'Life, Animated' - Autistic boy saved by Disney films

How can Disney films show an autistic boy the way back to the world? That is revealed in Life, Animated, a documentary that not only steals hearts but also offers surprising insights. The Oscar nomination may not have been cashed in, but the film's victory lap is no less so. 'It has found its way to just about every country that can afford to buy a film,' says director Roger Ross Williams. He has just returned from presenting his film in Japan. I speak to him at Amsterdam's LAB111, which is also home to the producer (Submarine) of the prison project Williams is currently working on.

Autism? No, the power of stories!

Williams' film tells that history with a catchy combination of home movies, animated clips and interviews. And also follows now 23-year-old Owen in his exciting new steps. He gets a home of his own and falls in love for the first time. Moving - and also heartbreaking - moments that will shatter many a preconception about autistic people.

As soon as I drop the word 'autism' at the beginning of the interview, by the way, Williams hastens to stress that his film is not about autism.

So, what is Life, Animated about?

"It's a coming-of-age story about the power of cinema and storytelling. Owen grew up on a diet of films and stories. I don't know anyone as steeped in the language of cinema as he is. Like many autistic people, he focuses on one thing and has become an expert at it. Those Disney films are contemporary adaptations of age-old fairy tales. Such myths and legends are there for a reason. Since the earliest times, they offer life lessons and connect people."

Disney club

"While making the film, I learnt from Owen that growing up itself is actually such a classic hero story. That's why it appeals to people all over the world."

"Also, those Disney films are life lessons disguised as fairy tales. The clear, straightforward structure allows everyone to put their own feelings and experiences into them. Owen and the other children in the Disney club he founded also use these films to figure out how the world works and how to behave and react. Owen feels particularly drawn to the side characters, the sidekicks who accompany the hero on his journey. Because he also sees himself as a sidekick."

Hand-drawn animation

"Because the emotions are magnified, he can easily recognise them. Owen likes hand-drawn animation much more than computer animation. In the hand-drawn work, the artist has put his feelings. Early animators often had a mirror on their drawing board. They looked into that to see how best to draw an emotion. Even the animation scenes we use to portray Owen's own inner world in the film are hand-drawn, by a great French animation team."

In Life, Animated, some episodes from Owen's childhood are also reconstructed as simple animations executed almost as pencil sketches. We see the full richness of Owen's inner world towards the end of the film. In animated scenes realised with a lot of colour and imagination, in which Owen has his own adventure in the company of sidekicks runaway from Disney films. That filming of Owen's self-conceived story also exists as the standalone animated short Land of the Lost Sidekicks, voiced by Owen himself, available to watch on iTunes.

Outsider

When Williams decided to make a film about Owen, he already knew Owen's father and mother well because he had worked with them as a television director. Owen himself he had only met once when the latter was a child.

"His story appealed to me because Owen is an outsider. Outsiders are a recurring theme in my work as a documentary filmmaker. I want to give them a voice. I feel connected to them because, as a black gay man in America, I also see myself as an outsider. Especially in America, where every day you read about black people being shot. Under Trump, the hunt is on again and mostly blacks are populating privatised prisons. The prison industry is the subject of my next film."

"The image of a black gay man as in Moonlight is an exception in the media."

My cautious hope that with the success of Oscar winner Moonlight there might be a different sound in the US film industry is not shared by Williams. "Hollywood means blockbusters," is how he sums it up. But back to his adventure with Owen.

"I had little experience with autistic people. In the beginning, I felt uncomfortable with Owen, I had yet to figure out how to connect with him."

Shifting perspective

"The biggest surprise was he was much more intelligent and sensitive than I expected. Not only that he knows all those Disney films by heart from beginning to end and understands exactly how those stories work, but he can also remember very well what it was like to be an autistic child in that, for him, confusing world."

"I see making documentaries as a kind of journey. You start it with certain expectations and presuppositions, and then you can discover that it's all very different. Your perspective shifts during the making, and so I also like to see the audience come out of the film with such a new perspective."

Interrotron

Which is not to say that penetrating Owen's perceptions and making contact with him was initially a matter of much experimentation. The solution was to use the so-called Interrotron, an arrangement of cameras, mirrors and screens invented by Errol Morris that allows direct eye contact between the interviewee and interviewer, and hence the audience. During the interview sessions, Owen did not sit in a room with Williams, but faced him on the same screen on which he watched his favourite Disney films. One of the great revelations of Life, Animated is how enthusiastically Owen not only plays along with those film scenes, but also how expressively and emotionally he responds.

"I had first tried if his mother Cornelia couldn't interview him, but that was just too familiar again. Cornelia was also going to fill in for him. With the Interrotron, I could show him the film clips that had been important for his development, and in between, my face would appear on the screen to ask him questions. That worked because at that point I became a character in the film, so to speak."

New steps

One of the more hilarious moments is when we see Owen's older brother Walter wrestling with whether, and if so how, he should initiate Owen into the secrets of sex, something Disney is far from doing. "Should I show him Disney porn sometimes?" He can't figure it out.

Meanwhile, we see Owen himself bravely taking new steps in life.

"That sex will be fine when he gets around to it," Williams confides. "He's doing amazingly well. He was on the red carpet for hours at the Oscar ceremony, He gave interviews there and he also goes along to presentations of the film. From a sidekick, he is turning into the hero of his own story."