Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin is a real person: an autistic woman, an academic with a doctorate in animal behaviour, and the engineer who designed a system used in a large share of American cattle facilities. The film covers her university years and her entry into the profession. Grandin thinks in images; she can build a mechanism in her mind and run it, and cannot read people's faces. Rather than describe this, the film shows it: drawings, geometric schematics and rushes of imagery appear on screen. The system she designed reduces panic in animals. That is the film's most interesting idea: she understands what animals feel better than what people feel, because she experiences the same kind of sensory overload. Claire Danes plays Grandin, with David Strathairn as her teacher and Julia Ormond as her mother. Mick Jackson directed. It was made for HBO and won Emmys. The right place to go for anyone looking for a portrayal of autism that avoids cliché. For a viewer expecting a film on a cinematic scale, the television format shows.