A Boy Called Po

A Boy Called Po

Not only are the motives behind “A Boy Called Po” good, but they are also honorable. Colin Goldman, the screenwriter of this story about a young widower father bringing up an autistic son, wants to break down some of the stigmas surrounding people especially children on the autism spectrum. There are some problems with “A Boy Called Po,” directed by John Asher, although it always seems a little bit unfair to criticize a movie like this.

The script tries to do too much, but also the film really touched me in a few places, mostly in the scenes between father and son. Doctors and therapists describe different treatments in multiple scenes and what part of autism they were designed for. It is very technical language, but if you do not know anything about this world these sequences can be very eye opening. And then there is Burt Bacharach’s music which is one of the most beautiful things ever written and was composed for this film his first original score in 17 years.

In the opening sequence we see David Wilson (Christopher Gorham) standing over his wife’s casket, then crying alone in bed; we see his son Patrick (Julian Feder), “Po” for short, wandering around a playground casting a long shadow lost in his own world except for when he’s bullied by a bigger kid; we see this for quite some time while Bethany Joy Lenz sings Burt Bacharach’s monster hit song “(They Long To Be) Close To You” made famous primarily by The Carpenters; if you didn’t know Burt Bacharach was involved with “A Boy Called Po,” you might be confused by how much foregrounding of this song there is in these opening scenes; it’s essentially a music video; but more on that later.

Po is really smart: there’s complex math all over the blackboard above his bed and he reads the stock pages of the Wall Street Journal. But he is a handful. After his mother dies, Po has withdrawn and regressed. His school can’t handle him anymore. The principal suggests to David that maybe mainstreaming Po with the other kids is no longer an option. David’s life is in chaos. As an engineer, he’s racing to meet a deadline with his design for a hybrid aircraft. Work pressures are mounting; his boss is losing patience; but how can he focus on work when every other day Po’s school calls with some new issue?

Po drifts further and further into a dream-world (manifested in the film as a sunset-lit beach, or a green forest) where he meets up with a pirate, or a cowboy, or a knight (all played by Andrew Bowen). In this dream-world, the pirate/cowboy/knight looks to Po for advice/help with things; treats him with respect; looks up to him all of which stands in contrast to how David finds it increasingly difficult to relate/connect with his son in the real world until eventually, one day Po “drifts” too far. The father/son scenes are thoughtful, complicated, honest.

In movies autism tends to get treated in reductive and condescending ways: prodigy children displaying adorable eccentricities; dazzling mathematical/musical genius spouting wise epigrams in disconnected deadpan. “Po” avoids these traps. It is very good on what a bureaucratic nightmare this situation can be for parents: overburdened school systems; multiple therapists; health insurance; impatient employers.

But, the subplot about David’s airplane project is a waste of time and effort. They throw too much symbolism into it. For example, in this movie it isn’t sufficient that David is already struggling to keep his job with his boss mad at him for leaving early so often because Katie needs to go to therapy that’s good enough; they don’t have to make David work on a plane that will save the world from global warming or something.

“Will he finish his important plane?” feels like the wrong question, asked by another movie. We’re supposed to feel how big (for humanity) it would be if David gets fired. It’s too much, the film can’t even walk straight with this overreaching subplot.

Burt Bacharach: Three time Oscar winner. Six-time Grammy winner (plus a Lifetime Achievement Grammy). Composer of such scores as What’s New Pussycat, Lost Horizon, Arthur and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (to name one).

Writer of some of the most famous songs of all time sung by some of our most distinctive singers: Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, I Say a Little Prayer, The Look of Love, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do), That’s What Friends Are For… In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him 32 in their 100 Greatest Songwriters of all time. Burt Bacharach is 89 years old.

Nikki Bacharach was Burt’s daughter with Angie Dickinson. She was born in 1966. Late in her life she was improperly diagnosed bipolar but actually suffered from Asperger’s syndrome; she died in 2007 at the age of 40 from suicide. Asher reached out to Burt for licensing rights to ‘Close To You’. After seeing the film Burt decided he wanted to score it and write a theme song in tribute to his daughter, who throughout her life was called Nikki or “Po” by her friends and family.

The word is derived from “Supergirl,” a nickname her cousin gave her when they were children. Bacharach’s music in “Po” is a gentle and melancholy piano that holds the sometimes awkward pieces together, underscoring the emotions without pushing them; it’s beautiful work, deserving of special recognition given who Burt Bacharach is.

The recent Life, Animated did so much good for autism awareness and awareness of different kinds of minds in general because it told its story with humor and didn’t soft-pedal the negative parts. It also didn’t hurt that Owen Suskind made for such an involving protagonist: Journeying from being this kid who can’t communicate at all (except through Disney movies) to becoming a confident public speaker was moving even before you factored in all the stuff about his father admitting he wanted his son to be normal and how impossible it became to define what that meant as Owen grew up anyway.

John Asher’s “A Boy Called Po” isn’t as successful as “Life, Animated” is just about every way except one if seeing stories about families dealing with autism fills some need for you right now, you may not mind its flaws.

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