Barry Levinson’s Rain Man won the Golden Bear at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival and four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It made roughly $354–$429 million on a $25 million budget, the highest-grossing film of 1988. It is also a movie that asks you to care about a man who spends most of it caring only about money.
Trailer, via Via Vision Entertainment.
Charlie Babbitt and the Four Lamborghinis
Tom Cruise plays Charlie Babbitt, a collectibles dealer importing four grey market Lamborghinis to Los Angeles for resale. The EPA is holding the cars at port because they failed emission tests. Charlie owes a creditor named Wyatt and has already taken down payments from buyers, so he tells his employee Lenny to lie to them while he stalls.
Then his estranged father Sanford dies. Charlie and his girlfriend Susanna, played by Valeria Golino, travel to Cincinnati to settle the estate. He inherits rosebushes and a 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible. The rest of the $3 million goes to an unnamed trustee.
Raymond, Dr. Bruner, and the Money
The trustee is a local mental institution, and the money is meant for Raymond, the older brother Charlie never knew he had. Dustin Hoffman plays Raymond as an autistic savant with superb recall, strict routines and almost no emotional expression except in distress.
Charlie takes Raymond out of the facility to a hotel. Susanna leaves him over how he treats Raymond. Charlie then asks Dr. Gerald Bruner, played by Gerald R. Molen, for half the estate in exchange for returning Raymond. Bruner refuses. Charlie decides to seek custody instead, to get control of the money.
The Trip That Refuses to Fly
Raymond will not fly, so the brothers drive to Los Angeles. Progress is slow because Raymond keeps his routines: watching The People’s Court every day, getting to bed by 11:00 p.m., refusing to travel when it rains. He also objects to the Interstate.
The road trip is the film’s whole engine, and it is the part that has aged least well. The movie treats Raymond’s routines as obstacles and punchlines before it treats them as a person’s life.
What the Cast Carries
Hoffman won Best Actor for this, and it is not hard to see why the performance was the thing everyone remembered. Cruise is doing harder work than he gets credit for, playing a man who is genuinely unlikable for long stretches.
- Dustin Hoffman as Raymond Babbitt
- Tom Cruise as Charlie Babbitt
- Valeria Golino as Susanna
- Gerald R. Molen as Dr. Bruner
- Bonnie Hunt as Sally Dibbs
Two Brothers, Two Kinds of Recall
The film sets up a clean contrast and leans on it.
| Charlie | Raymond | |
|---|---|---|
| Money | Wants the $3 million estate | Figures in the estate’s terms |
| Routine | Stalls buyers, lies to them | Fixed schedule, 11:00 p.m. bedtime |
| Travel | Will fly | Refuses to fly, refuses rain |
| Family | Estranged from Sanford | Unknown to Charlie |
Kim Peek and Bill Sackter
Barry Morrow wrote the character of Raymond after meeting the real-life savant Kim Peek. The characterization also drew on Bill Sackter, a friend of Morrow’s who was the subject of Bill, an earlier film Morrow wrote. That origin matters, because it explains both the film’s sympathy and its limits.
Why the Ending Works Anyway
The brothers’ cross-country trip changes both their lives, and the film earns that without pretending Charlie becomes a good man or Raymond becomes someone else. That restraint is the best thing in Rain Man.
It is also the only thing in Rain Man that resists the era’s habit of turning a disabled character into a lesson for the able one. Raymond is a device for Charlie’s growth for most of the runtime. The film knows it, and mostly does not fix it.
The Verdict on Rain Man
Rain Man is a well-made, well-acted road movie built on a premise that flatters its audience. Levinson’s direction is clean, the screenplay by Morrow and Bass moves, and Hoffman’s performance is the reason the film still gets discussed. The problem is what the film does with Raymond: it makes him a mirror for Charlie and calls that understanding. The tagline promises “a journey through understanding and fellowship.” What the film delivers is a journey through Charlie’s bank account.
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