More on Roman J. Israel Esq

If you read this morning’s piece on Roman J. Israel Esq., then you have a lot of background on the thought process of the film's star and director while making the film. Now we’re here to discuss the end result of how that all came together.

For starters, this movie is wonderful. Denzel turns in a highwire performance that is so impressive to watch, playing a lawyer who’s one of the greatest minds in the history of the American judicial system, but is terrible with people. That first part is not surprising: Washington always plays high status on screen. He can’t help it. You totally believe that Denzel Washington could be responsible for massive social change, or as a young up and coming activist puts it in the film when a colleague remarks on their distaste for Roman “You stand on his shoulders”.

But for him to play the lawyer who isn’t charismatic and is awful around people feels like a stretch. This is where it becomes fascinating for writer/director Dan Gilroy to write this part specifically for him and make clear that if Denzel wasn’t onboard, the film was a no go.

And yet he pulls it off. His movie star performance is so impressive to watch that you’ll follow Denzel to the ends of the earth due to the innate attraction you have for his character. Even though he’s not traditionally “charismatic”, he is constantly likable. We need to constantly root for Roman even when he’s being kind of an asshole, when he makes bad decisions, or when he is just blinded by the black and white way he sees the world.

The other thing I want to talk about is the coding of Roman J. as a man on the autism spectrum. This is a hard needle to thread. To overplay it is to sell out your character, break the reality of the film you’re in, and disrespect an often disrespected group. We ALL know what over playing disorders on screen looks like. I’m talking about Forrest Gump, Rain Man, I Am Sam, and Rosie O’Donnell’s minstrel show level performance in Riding the Bus With My Sister.

I’m someone who by the minute is becoming more fervent in my stance that characters with disorders and disabilities should be played by people with those afflictions. Watching performances by Troy Kotsur in CODA or Vanessa Burghardt in Cha Cha Real Smooth feel so much more powerful than Bryan Cranston in The Upside could ever be (we love you Bryan Cranston but c’mon).

With all that being said, this is maybe one of the best portrayals of a neuro divergent person I’ve seen by a neurotypical actor. And there are several choices Washington and Gilroy make to do this:

1. HE DOESN’T DO A FUCKING VOICE!

2. As mentioned before, Denzel reads as high status no matter what. They allow him to remain on top even when textually he should be at his lowest rung. So often actors or filmmakers' first misstep is creating characters without agency who we are supposed to feel bad for because they’re “different” or pushed around, thus we should pity them.

3. Similarly, there is nothing worse than an actor selling out their character for laughs or as a safety net if the film fails. It’s Mark Wahlberg pointing at his character in The Happening saying “look at this nerd” and at no point does Washington do this. Roman is a man of dignity, so Denzel plays it as a dignified man. Roman is aspirational, not in that it’s amazing that a man with all his challenges can be so great, rather, he is a principled man..

4. Autism isn’t the point of the movie in any way, so they don’t feel the need to play it up at any point. They never make cracks about it, it’s not a part of the characters arc, it’s not the thing that makes him who he is, he doesn’t have some tragic backstory about how he was discriminated against for being autistic. He took them to court at the age of fourteen and beat them because he just naturally understands the inner workings of the law.

Roman is a multifaceted character who happens to be on the spectrum. It's never mentioned or pushed and you could theoretically go the entire movie without realizing it. The only time they really allude to it is when Colin Farrell is on the phone with another lawyer and calls Roman “a savant type”, but even that scene is showing him as reductive and manipulative.

To close, I just want to say, as someone who is very close to people on the autism spectrum, it is really frustrating for me to watch such half measures taken with these characters, to see people slap an autism decal on them and call it progress (and I can’t imagine how much more angering it is for people with ASD).

I remember watching Tropic Thunder with someone very close to me who has ASD and when they saw the Simple Jack parody trailer, they laughed so hard. They thought it was absolutely hilarious because they saw a literalization of how they felt watching movies like Rain Man or Radio. So, it’s extremely refreshing to watch a film that gives a performance that is big, yet so specific, nuanced, and shows love to this community without being patronizing.

Nobody is just one thing, nobody is just their race, gender, sexual orientation, or diagnosis.Roman J. Israel Esq. is not a perfect movie, but what it is is a movie that understands the multifaceted nature of people and embraces it.