Film: Spectrum & Lawn Dogs

Spectrum: (short) Director, Rick Stanton, 2024, UK, Black & White, 31 mins

Lawn Dogs: Director, John Duigan, 1997, UK, Colour, 101 mins, Certificate: 15

This April we are celebrating World Autism Acceptance Month (that kicked off with World Autism Awareness Day on April 2), with 2 British cinematic gems, so different, yet so alike.

Spectrum is directed by Rick Stanton, and starring his younger, autistic brother, Steve - a natural, and the always endearing BAFTA winner Wunmi Mosaku. It is a black and white urban fable about a neurodivergent (super)hero navigating everyday life in his own, unique, unassumingly brave way.

Lawn Dogs is starring the always brilliant, Oscar winner for Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, Sam Rockwell, in one of his earliest big movie roles, and the wide-eyed prodigy that Mischa Burton was at only 11 years old. It is a colourful suburban (fairy)tale about a no longer a child, not yet a teenager (anti)hero navigating childhood and her unlikely friendship with the misfit that mows her neighbourhood’s lawns in her own extraordinary, unapologetically innocent, fearless way.

Both films explore different modes of perceiving the world, adopting points of view of people that don't quite fit, but seem to possess some kind of world changing, redemptive, distinctive, yet self-effacing superpower.

And both films are blessed with 2 of the best finales that ever graced the big screen - unexpected but absolutely earned, inspired and inspiring, as jaw-dropping and exhilarating as a just discovered hidden treasure you didn't go searching for and never knew you needed.