OCD and Two Movie Characters

These days I have a crazy anxiety and the extent of O.C.D has increased multi-times. First time in my life though that these OCD are being accepted world-wide, cleaning hands multiple times, cleaning the doors with Dettol and water, all packets that are brought from outside are wiped and sanitized. The list is cool and endless.

Till now OCD, anxieties and worries are not understood very clearly. Anxiety does not mean you are nuts, O.C.D does not mean you need attention. Acceptance by brain and society is required. May be details and my sojourn with these situations on later blogs.

Here I am trying to explain a bit about OCD and hope distinction will be understood. Two movie characters we will try to understand. Hope we have seen these two movies, The Rain Man and The Aviator. If not please do watch them.

Taking some liberty assuming you would know these characters.

Raymond In Rain Man

Some people think severe intensity of OCD was displayed in this movie. Dustin Hoffman displayed in this film an amazing role of Raymond, brilliant person with autism as core but people connected it with OCD too. That’s a fair argument, yet I’d point out that Raymond was autistic in a pretty serious way, and that his O.C.D. manifested itself through the pre-existing autism. To say that Raymond was O.C.D. would be similar to remarking that a person who is paralyzed from the neck down also can’t swim very well. Considering the first reality, the second is something of a foregone conclusion. That said, however, Raymond was pretty friggin’ O.C.D., and wasn’t shy about showing this off. The routines that Raymond followed were paramount to law, and could not be broken or deviated from in any way, for any reason. Whether it was the number of fish sticks to be eaten, the brand of underwear he had on, or the appearance of his favorite program, Raymond’s life revolved around orderly routine.

Dustin Hoffman is one of the greatest living actors still working in films in this author’s humble opinion, and unfortunately, the roles the man has been getting recently haven’t tapped into the rich vein of talent that lies just under Hoffman’s surface. His somewhat quiet, understated portrayal of Raymond in this picture acted as the perfect counterbalance to Tom Cruise’s brother character Charlie, whose vocal performance filled in the gaps purposefully left empty by Hoffman.

Hughes in  The Aviator

Before most people knew what O.C.D. was, or perceived of a condition even remotely similar to the actual illness, people knew about Howard Hughes and his freaky-deaky lifestyle. When he died and they found Hughes, it’s said that his corpse had long tangled hair, uncut toenails, and weighed in at a mere 90 pounds. Throughout his life, it seems as if Howard went out of his way to consistently break new ground in the field of batshit crazy. He once had an air purifier installed in his car that was more expensive than the automobile itself and took up most of the trunk. It’s pretty rare that somebody this fucked up has the means to explore their O.C.D. illness with such passionate zeal, so Hughes is an exceptional case. Martin Scorcese’s “The Aviator” touched on a lot of the quirks that were legendary even during Hughes’ lifetime. This was an industrialist and filmmaker with so much money that he could indulge his madness up to the point that he could demand that obscenely expensive experimental aircraft be re-crafted so that the plane’s contours had the correct, balanced look. This was a guy who could hole himself up in perfect seclusion free from germs, and demand that every precaution be taken to assure his perfect solitude was respected.

It’s known that Hughes owned a Las Vegas television station; it’s rumored that Hughes bought this station so that he could watch movies well into the night at his leisure, and since he was the owner, he could call down if he fell asleep, and make the boys down at KLAS re-queue a scene for him if he wanted. Some people, most people, try and fight their O.C.D., or at least come to terms with it in a way that allows them to function normally in a civilized society. With a net worth well into the billions, Howard Hughes didn’t HAVE to do shit, and he lived his life like a man well aware of that fact. When you have as much money as this guy, the world adjusts to your schedule and habits, and O.C.D. becomes the world’s problem, not yours. Leonardo DiCaprio did a pretty good job conveying this in “The Aviator,” and was careful to draw out a character that wasn’t a sketch, but instead a developed individual who suffered from wounds both physical and emotional. If you take Scorcese’s word for it, Hughes’ O.C.D. was a condition developed over the course of a lifetime, only to peak once the man had achieved enough influence and power to surrender his life over to the illness. A solid performance with a somewhat balanced portrayal of an often enigmatic and controversial historical figure, it’s hard to rank any person over Hughes, for as it’s often said, truth is almost always stranger than fiction.