Danes reveals autistic pioneer’s strength

February 05, 2010|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

The first moment Claire Danes appears on screen in HBO’s “Temple Grandin’’ as the autistic animal specialist and author, I wanted to roll my eyes and laugh derisively. Great: Another glamorous actor straining for cred and awards by playing a disabled person, twisting up her regular physicality in order to dazzle. Another star to honor because she didn’t pluck her eyebrows.

But my moment of resistance passed quickly, as the transcendent beauty of Danes’s performance took over. In the movie, which premieres tomorrow night at 8, Danes relaxes enough to let the uniquely blustery Temple Grandin inhabit her body, her voice, and the very wiring of her brain. She’s almost unrecognizable from the Danes of “My So-Called Life,’’ as awkward and conspicuous with her wide eyes and her cowboy shirts as Angela was a muted high school Everygirl. Playing Grandin, one of the first autistics to explain her condition to the world, a woman who eats only yogurt and jello and won’t pass through electric doors, Danes stretches herself in completely new and appealing ways.

Under the direction of Mick Jackson, Danes doesn’t merely evoke the flat biopic heroism of a brave woman whom we must revere, keeping viewers at a respectful distance - the kind of performance Hilary Swank delivered in “Amelia.’’ She lets us feel the tiny nuances of Temple’s lonely strength in the face of her overwhelmingly sensory daily life. For Temple, ordinary physical touching is painful, sounds are deafening, facial expressions are alien - all of which Danes conveys without any scenery chewing. She modulates carefully between skittishness and terror, helping us understand why the young Temple actually found relief in the same kind of wooden “hug machine’’ used to isolate cattle.

It helps enormously that the movie around Danes is so sturdy. Most of the story takes place in the 1960s and ’70s, as Temple made her way through school and the early years of her career. (Grandin is 62.) She stumbles forward through classmate ridicule and teacher insensitivity with the help of a few important older figures. Her mother, played by the well-cast Julia Ormond, ignores the Boston doctor who recommends institutionalization. Her daughter, she insists, is “different, not less.’’ Temple’s aunt in Texas (Catherine O’Hara) fosters in her niece the love of animals that will later define her career. And her favorite teacher (David Strathairn) helps her realize that she thinks in pictures, and that she can use her difference as an advantage, particularly in terms of engineering.