Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (2013) Online

"And I shall rest my head between two worlds, in the valley of the vanquished"- Leolo Lozone

There have been several well-known films about autism including Rain Man and The Black Balloon, but none I've seen are more authentic or moving than Sam Fleischner's remarkable second feature Stand Clear of the Closing Doors. The film, written by Rose Lichter-Marck and Micah Bloomberg and winner of a special jury prize at Tribeca, is without savants, big name stars uttering clever catch phrases, and non-stop irrelevant chatter. In fact, its main protagonist, thirteen-year-old Ricky (Jesus Sanchez Valez), hardly speaks at all. He doesn't need to. His face tells us all we need to know about his alienation and disconnection.

Ricky, afflicted with what is today known as ASD, an autism spectrum disorder, lives with his family in Far Rockaway, Queens and struggles to fit in at school which he attends only sporadically. An administrator tells Alex's mother Mariana (Andrea Suarez) that they have no budget to give proper attention to a special needs child like Ricky but Mariana has little choice. Working as a housekeeper to make ends meet, she would like to have Ricky attend a special school but is prevented from doing so by its prohibitive cost and by the fact that she is undocumented.

Ricky's father Ricardo Sr. (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) works out of town, taking whatever construction jobs he can get but his work comes with the price of not being at home to support Ricky. Ricky's sister Carla (Azul Zorrilla) shows little understanding of her brother's needs and, like many teenagers, is primarily focused on herself. Resenting having to take her brother to school every day and pick him up when its time to go home, one day she "forgets" to pick him up and tells her mother that he is now old enough to come home by himself. Unfortunately, when Carla does not show up, Ricky follows a man with a dragon symbol on his jacket heading onto the subway.

The centerpiece of the film is the boy's eleven-day odyssey riding the A-train to Manhattan and back, as he encounters all of what New York has to offer except for connection. He sits by himself, withdrawn and alone and does not communicate with anyone around him. Shot in real time (passengers had to sign consent forms), he is a witness to teenage break dancers, dire warnings from gospel preachers, old men telling stories to their children, a young woman clipping her boyfriend's fingernails, and many "colorful" conversations about almost anything. Through it all, Ricky remains a passive observer, slowly retreating deeper into himself. He drinks water only when he finds a half full bottle and eats nothing until a homeless man gives him a banana.

The only sound we hear coming from him is an internal voice-over talking about people's feet and the shoes they are wearing. As Ricky's unforgiving ordeal continues, a different drama is taking place above the ground as his mother searches for her son together with her friend Carmen (Marsha Stephanie Blake), a saleswoman in the shoe store that Ricky frequents. They roam the beaches of Far Rockaway, post fliers with Ricky's picture on it, and talk to the police, but without expectations. As Ricky begins to visibly show the stress of his journey, the distinction between shadow and substance becomes murky and it is unclear what is reality and what is hallucination.

The threat of Hurricane Sandy adds a new dimension and a new desperation to the search and as the storm approaches and Ricky's father returns to join in the search, the film builds an unbearable tension that holds us tightly in its grip. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors cares about its characters and their story is presented without an iota of sentimentality or pandering. It does not attempt to teach us any lessons or strain for our sympathy. It leaves us shaken because we know that we have encountered the truth and while that is often a disturbing experience, it can also be an exhilarating one.

Life is tough on the streets but this film really puts you in the middle of the chaos. A young autistic Mexican boy runs away and gets lost on the subway system of New York, his undocumented family goes haywire. They are forced to mend their splintered family differences and search for their lost young one. As a typical Latin mother, she bears the brunt of the worry and embodies the guilt of all her troubles. It is a tough world and this movie captures the craziness found within the underground world of the subway in New York City. Beautifully shot and you can feel the emotion of the boy. I saw this film as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.

(Flash Review)

This independent feeling movie about an autistic high school kid whose sister fails to help bring him home from school and he decides to wander and explore the subways of Manhattan without telling anyone. It is more a gritty character study of Manhattan through the eyes of this autistic boy as you watch him wander around, interact with all walks of life as well as him spending a night or more in the grime of various subway stations. Secondarily, it shows how a partially fractured family attempts to come together during their search for their boy. The film implores oodles of atmospheric shots and scenes and there isn't a ton of dialog or even character development for that matter, contributing to a lack of an emotion connection to the family, boy or caring what happens to him beyond basic human decency. Some praise it for being gritty and authentic and while agree, I see it as a story that could have been better developed.

The 1953 independently made cult classic, "Little Rebel", told the story of a runaway kid believing thanks to a prank that he accidentally killed his younger brother. He runs off to Coney Island, finding himself, while his regretful younger brother searches in a panic for him. Over 63 years, that has become a classic of the independent genre, and at 60 years old, seemingly influenced this modern independent masterpiece which I hope one day is considered a classic.

Young Ricky is an autistic 13 year old often ignored and resented by his older sister, and desperately loved and worried about by his hard working mother. Ricky is not picked up one day after school by his sister, and ends up riding the trains, seemingly for days, while his mother searches desperately for him as the threat of a hurricane approaches. Through the eyes of this sweet but troubled teen, we see what autism is all about: the fears, the obsessions, the fascinations. It's a difficult mind to live with, so the audience will be glued, knowing that life in the city on a daily basis is difficult enough for a "normal" person, let alone someone with a developmental disease such as autism. In reading about the symptoms of autism, I noticed several things that Ricky did listed, although his reactions to strangers (particularly a young man missing a lower arm) do indicate that he is approachable.

Many of the situations that Ricky goes through I've seen on the train, from random acts of kindness to sudden acts of cruelty through humiliating inhumanity and threats of violence. The family struggles to find their way as they search for him, with anger and fear from the mother towards her daughter, fear of being identified as an illegal alien, and the understanding and love it takes to bring a family together. Often, the action is seemingly through the eyes of Ricky, sometimes the mother, giving this an interesting perspective. The people on the train are all identifiable as people I've seen, and when the mention of a possible super-storm arriving, it brings back the days of the previous years Sandy. This is a film to be shared and cherished with family, as it really opens the eyes to many issues, most importantly the issues surrounding autism.

"Stand Clear of the Closing Doors" received universally positive reviews on Metacritic. Stephen Holden writing in the "NY Times" called it a "small miracle of a film." If I could speak with Mr. Holden, I would ask him, "did we see the same film?" Obviously, it's the visual palate that mostly entrances critics such as Mr. Holden. He adds that the movie, "captures the grass-roots swirl of New York City with an extraordinary sensory attuning to urban life."

"Stand Clear" in actuality features a feeble story. A 13 year old boy, Ricky, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome (and is possibly borderline autistic) lives with his mother, Mariana, and 15 year old sister, Carla, in Far Rockaway, Queens. One day Ricky walks out of the apartment, and his mother soon calls 911, reporting that her child is missing.

While Ricky rides the subway, we see virtually everything from his point of view. He encounters various miscreants, typical of the type of unpleasant people one expects to meet on a NYC subway or in a subway station, every day. Ricky's confusion is heightened on Halloween, when various costumed characters make their entrance. This is perhaps the "Grass-roots swirl" that Mr. Holden refers to. Keep in mind that Ricky's travails go on ad infinitum and contributes to the overall tediousness of the narrative.

Meanwhile, Mariana pines away for her lost son, argues with her resentful daughter and expresses her deep disappointment with the father, Ricardo Sr., who is been away at work and hasn't joined the search for little Ricky, fast enough.

"Stand Clear" is nothing more than a short expanded into a feature and all the "experimental" cinematography is not sufficient enough to cover up for the fact that this is a story that begs to be called "soporific." Credit the actors for trying, but beware: this is a real slow grind!