Just for a moment in Louis Theroux: Extreme Love – Autism (BBC Two), the ever-unflappable documentary maker looked flapped. There he was, talking to Nicky, a 19 year-old with fairly mild autism, when suddenly he found himself on the back foot. “This is what you’re best known for?” asked Nicky, looking up Theroux’s Wikipedia entry. “TV shows like When Louis Met... and Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends?” “Well, er, I don’t know, maybe,” Theroux squirmed, his face a picture of discomfort. “Er, we don’t really have to read that, do we Nicky?”
It was enjoyable to watch the tables being turned. Significant, too: for the past 15 years, armed with his faux-naïf line of questioning, Theroux has made his name from being able to coax some of society’s most extreme and eccentric characters – from convicted paedophiles to exotic pet owners – into talking about their peculiar predilections. Tackling autism, however, he seemed genuinely out of his comfort zone. In this first of two films centring on neurological conditions (next week: dementia), Theroux relaxed his usual focus on getting his subjects to reveal more than they should. The purpose here was to offer a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of people having to cope with extraordinary circumstances. Eschewing the irony of his previous works, Extreme Love was a simple yet effective piece of film-making: sympathetic, and without a drop of mawkishness.
The documentary followed Theroux as he journeyed to America to spend time with several families whose children were pupils at New Jersey’s Development Learning Center, an innovative autism school. We met 13-year-old Joey, whose disorder meant he was prone to shrieking and violent tantrums. His scenes made for particularly difficult viewing: at one point, when Joey was being physically restrained by his mother, Theroux asked if she’d like him to stop filming. “No,” the mother replied, tellingly. “I want people to see what autism is really like.”
Indeed, it was the interviews with the parents that upset me most. Paula, an exhausted mother of autistic twins, was especially candid: “I just try and make them happy, because, God forgive me, I don’t get a lot of enjoyment from them,” she said, sorrowfully. Later, while trying to articulate what it felt like to see “normal” children playing outside, her husband had to move away from the camera to dry his tears.
Extreme Love wasn’t all doom and gloom, though: there was light relief in the form of Nicky, with whom Theroux struck up an entertaining friendship over the several occasions he met him, along with his mother, Mary. Nicky – who was on the verge of enrolling at a mainstream school – was verbose, self-assured and, unlike most people suffering from autism, interested in others. He even gave Theroux a hug. The work going on at the DLC was also uplifting. Here the curriculum focuses on social interaction and teaching basic life-skills. It was a remarkable place.
Ultimately, Theroux’s film was more concerned with the parents who bring up autistic children – this was a paean to their resolve. Emerging from it unaffected was just about inconceivable.
