Il silenzio del testimone

My daughter is autistic. I found this movie to be a very real depiction of that type of behavior. Almost painful to watch. Our school and physician felt she would be best served in an institution. I kept her at home and lost my family in the process, but found my daughter as a result. She is now a functional person. 18 years old. Good movie for any one curious as to what one would have to deal with. "Rain Man" is one thing,sort of a stereo type. But, this is well done from the parent/child view point. And, they ARE all individuals with varying degrees of a whole myriad of behaviors.

The film shows real difficulties with autism, with communication being a big obstacle. Breaking through this obstacle is a major factor in relieving tension and frustration on both sides with amazing results.

Acting by Bradley is above and beyond, it shows he has real talent.

I already love Melissa Gilbert and Patty Duke (a tragic loss there) so I'm pretty biased in praising their performances.

Needless to say, the other subject this film is about - abuse - saddens me a great deal. You wish such things didn't happen but reality proves different.

As an autistic girl myself, I found myself relating to a good few of Michael's behaviors. (Stimming, easily frustrated and getting uncomfortable in new environments) The acting was very genuine and and felt as if I was there in person. I really felt myself tearing up a couple times, both feeling happy and sorrow. The whole time I was on edge and was very invested. Anyone saying "bad autism rep" CLEARLY doesn't understand that autism is a spectrum and there's lots of people that act similar to Michael. I do not know if the actor playing Michael is autistic in real life, but he had done a very good job protraying a low functioning autistic boy. I would definitely recommend.

First off I wanna say I found this movie on tubi and it covers a very heavy and disturbing topic that deeply troubles me so I was worried going in. I think the characters are very good, the mother, and teacher and little boy are all great characters who I cared about. And I don't think the plot is bad at all at least in the beginning, however once the teacher started using facilitated communication the plot kind of lost me a bit. My main issue with the film is I don't think its plausible. What I mean is, the child is portrayed as severely autistic to the point where he cannot communicate and the film shows that the boy has a severe learning disability. In the beginning he can't even spell or seem to read. A regular child who is getting groomed is not going to understand what is happening to them is wrong, much less a child with a severe learning disability so that part just didn't feel realistic to me. How would he even understand what happened to him or know it was bad? I felt the plot would have been more realistic if the boy had been older at least where he could understand the concept of what happened. Secondly even if the child knew what happened was wrong, I don't believe the jury would believe him because he isn't able to really communicate properly. I feel the beginning and middle are good but the ending just feels incredibly contrived. I get the film makers probably wanted a feel good ending but in terms of the way the child is portrayed and his circumstances the ending just isn't realistic, and because of that I couldn't fully enjoy this movie. All that being said it is a decent film and the boy playing the character Michael did a amazing job, I would've really believed he was autistic.

I found the movie was well put together, and had a very good story line.

It's about time that some-one actually displayed what is going on in these sort of places, as I do not feel it is appropriate for these sort of things to be going on.