LEARNING YOU (Cert. 12A) comes from a faith-based film company. Tyler Sansom, co-writer and director, is an American pastor turned filmmaker. He sees his work as “redeeming the algorithm” by making films for the digital age. This time, Sansom celebrates the unconditional love that carers have for their autistic charges.
The first scene, however, features someone who has had enough of parenting the young Elijah Smith (Reece Turley), a neurodiverse child prone to violent outbursts. Surveying the subsequent wreckage in their living room, Elijah’s mother, Pam (Layla Cushman), acknowledges defeat.
When the film swiftly moves seven years on, it is clear from the little that we see of Pam that her love is far from unconditional, either for Elijah or Ty (John Wells), from whom she is now divorced. Without having any background story on her possibly heroic struggles to deal with the situation, the viewer may well have a feeling, never resolved, that she is being unfairly condemned by the picture. There is sympathy only for those who manage to soldier on even where there are understandable and costly lapses in behaving correctly at all times.
Ty has been an acclaimed architect but looking out for the adolescent Elijah (Caleb Milby) has taken its toll. In an attempt to revive the man’s creativity, Solomon, his boss, picks up a handful of berries. They are lovely to behold but lethal to consume. He patiently enjoins his colleague to contemplate the beauty of life, not any of its poison. At present, Ty is limited to visiting his son in a residential institution where deployment of physical restraint and desensitising medication constitute the mainstays of treatment. For a father, this is heartbreaking.
He wangles taking Elijah out, ostensibly for a few hours. In a heady moment, the pair of them drive to Myrtle Beach, in South Carolina.
We witnessed earlier, when Elijah was little, Ty holding the child’s toy bear and pretending that it was talking. The ploy was to contradict his son, who believed himself bad. But Ty needs some of his own medicine. He rails against God: “You just don’t show up, do you? You’re fired!”
This cri de coeur elicits results. From time to time, Nook Bear (Al Snow), an adult-sized replica of Elijah’s toy, successfully challenges and encourages Ty. Through this Guardian Angel, Ty is increasingly able to value the gifts that Elijah brings rather than bemoan the problems that autism sets. He tells his son: “I’m still learning you,” the implication being that this is what all of us are doing in our own relationships. Every day is a school day.
This should have been enough: certain problems will remain, but hope is eternal. A parallel story features a billionaire, pondering Matthew 16.26, and striving not to lose his own soul. This ultimately brings about the kind of redemption which fails to do justice to the concept. What does abide, nevertheless, is Wells’s sterling portrayal of a father who, having done all in his struggles with faith, is enabled to stand joyfully side by side with his beloved son.