'The Reason I Jump' the movie

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The Reason I Jump is based on the bestselling memoir by the nonverbal Autistic Naoki Higashida. Supposedly written using facilitated communication techniques, the book attempts to articulate Higashida’s first-person understanding of the disorder. Using his personal experiences, memories and interactions with others to translate how his mind works to a neuro-typical reader. The film takes that mission statement and expands it out, beyond Higashida’s experience to cover a variety of severely Autistic young people, both verbal and non-verbal.

Providing a holistic experience that is determined to show the audience the world through the eyes and ears of someone with Autism. Distinct sounds are raised; the hum of a generator, the pitter patter of rain, the straining sound of bubble wrap, all one piece of the puzzle that an Autistic person puts together to understand what is happening. People are shot in close-up or through objects such as spinning fans to distort our recognition. We even get a sense of the textures of certain objects, the feel of the world that is so vital to forming connections. The documentary is one of the most detailed, intense, sensory experiences to be released all year.

Autistic people deal with a lot of stereotypes. Based on everyday public perception, autistic people are emotionless robots who act like Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper. We’re self-absorbed. We’re incapable of being independent. On and on the list of toxic assumptions go. It’s daunting to confront those concepts, but that doesn’t mean autistic people haven’t fought back against them.

One way of fighting back came in the form of The Reason I Jump, a 2007 book by Naoki Higashida that aimed to upend harmful perceptions of autistic people by offering readers a glimpse into the mind and perspective of the author, who is autistic herself, and in so doing dashing societal norms about autistic people. The very existence of an introspective text alone debunks the concept that autistic people are cut off from the “real world”. As Higashida’s writing demonstrates, autistic people are very much rooted in reality. We just have a different way of processing it.

The documentary The Reason I Jump aims to make its source material proud by furthering its mission of demystifying the lives of autistic people. To accomplish this, director Jerry Rothwell expands the focus beyond just Higashida, using the book as a springboard for a series of segments focusing on different nonverbal autistic people from all around the globe. There’s Ben & Emma, a pair of hockey-adoring friends who live in Virginia, or Joss, an adult male living in Britain, as well as several others. We also see interviews with neurotypical individuals like David Mitchell, the ghostwriter of the original book.

Structuring The Reason I Jump like this expands the scope of Higashida’s original story, and strengthens its stated mission to help the general public find a greater understanding of autistic people. We see nonverbal autistic people engaging in different fixations, forms of expression, and other varying personality traits. Rothwell shows us there’s no one way to be autistic.

One vital component of the doc’s advocacy is its efforts to simulate the visual and auditory processing of many autistic people through unique cinematography and sound design.

Even more impactful is the sound work, which is used to emphasize the sizable importance of noises. Joss, for instance, has a fascination with the mechanical whirring of green boxes scattered around his neighborhood. Just sitting outside these boxes and listening to that sound brings Joss a sense of serenity. We’re immersed in these noises right along with Joss, giving the viewer a deep glimpse into his version of paradise.

Some of the most introspective moments of The Reason I Jump come from these newly-crafted moments that could only work in a visual medium like film. Others come directly from passages from Higashida’s book, like Higashida’s description of what it’s like to have moments of intense emotions

It’s always a surreal thing to hear someone talk about personal experiences you’ve never been able to put into words. Suddenly, the world feels a little clearer, as what was once frustratingly out of reach is now tangible. That’s how I felt hearing those words.

There were numerous moments like that in the doc which tap into experiences I’d long struggled to convey. The thought that future generations of autistic youngsters can point to moments in here to help illuminate their behavior is enough to make this a remarkable feature.

On top of that achievement, The Reason I Jump is also extremely well-put-together as a film on its own merits.

One of the final lines notes that the perspectives here won’t apply to every autistic person. But in taking one story and turning it into several, The Reason I Jump renders autistic individuals as they are: complex human beings. It’s a heartfelt notion told with an expansive scope and sharply realized filmmaking.

The cinematic language of The Reason I Jump, an ambitious documentary which attempts to simulate the sensory experience of non-verbal autism, is elemental, building up one isolated detail at a time. A living room, for example, emerges from the cascading, metallic tide of an electric fan, from the frisson of sizzling oil in a frying pan, from the wafting glow of sunlight refracted through a plastic water bottle. The scene is an act of double translation: Naoki Higashida’s book of the same name, written when he was 13 years old to map his experience of non-verbal autism, reimagined by film-maker Jerry Rothwell into a cinematic approximation of autistic perception – the sensory overwhelm, the hyper-intensity of details, the destabilizing fluidity of memory – for a neuro-typical audience.

The intention of The Reason I Jump, as both a book (originally published in Japanese in 2007 and translated into English six years later by a team including the Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell) and a film (which won an audience award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival) is explicitly didactic, a missive to explain one person’s neuro-divergent experience and a broader call to expand one’s imagination of human cognition. “My big hope is that by writing this book, I can explain in my own way what goes on in my mind,” wrote Higashida, his words recited in voiceover by Jordan O’Donegan as a young Japanese-British child (Jim Fujiwara) runs through a field.

Between a quarter to half of people with autism spectrum disorder experience some limitation of spoken language, from fully non-verbal to utterances. Rothwell’s film, with the help of sound designer Nick Ryan and cinematographer Ruben Woodin Dechamps, ambitiously transmutes Higashida’s words into an evocative, conscientious portal into a world without speech, through the daily experience of five people with non-verbal autism.

Mitchell, also the film’s co-screenwriter and father to a son who is on the spectrum, describes Higashida’s writing in the film as “cartography” for a neural experience he has witnessed but struggled to understand. The book “turned on its head, really, a lot of understanding about non-speaking autism that has grown up over the last few decades”, Rothwell said. “The idea that Naoki doesn’t possess a theory of mind is pretty blown out of the water”.

The five participants “represent a constellation of different takes on an experience of autism”, said Rothwell, “but they have massively different skills and challenges, the same as any other group of human beings”

“I think we can change the conversation around autism by being part of the conversation,” says Ben through the letter-board. The film concludes in Sierra Leone, where Jestina and her parents confront superstition, demonization and lack of understanding metastasized into fear as they work to open the country’s first special needs school.

One of the biggest challenges in making the film, he added, was balancing the primacy of the non-verbal experience with the useful and grounding context provided by neuro-typical parents. “I do think that there are things about context that are very helpful in watching the film and in understanding the people you’re seeing, and what their historical experience has been,” he said. “It was a balance and a bit of a struggle in how much to do that.”

A trickier balance still is tempering the film’s broad call for recognition and empathy, and the general language written by a young teenager, with the innumerable individual experiences of autism and speech limitations. “I’m really wary of even saying the film is about autism,” Rothwell said. “I feel like it’s about these five people that you meet, and [Higashida], and it tries to kind of immerse you inside of this larger perspective for an hour and a half. Beyond that, it certainly doesn’t speak for all autistic people.”

Still, Rothwell said he ultimately hopes the film will crack open the imaginations of neuro-typical people, unlink the assumption of non-speaking with non-thinking, and upend “the cultural recognition of the fact that non-speaking doesn’t mean you’re non-understanding, that you’re stupid or that you can’t learn.”

If the film could point people to Higashida’s books, to the writing of other non-verbal autistic people, to a voice “so generally disregarded,” he said, “that would be exciting”.

The Reason I Jump will open in cinemas across the UK on Friday 18th June