Music

Zu is newly sober when she receives news that she is to become the sole guardian of her half-sister named Music, a young girl on the autism spectrum. The film explores two of Sia’s favorite themes: finding your voice and creating family.

When the trailer for this movie was first released, there was a big brouhaha on Twitter (which spilled over onto several media outlets) over the casting of Maddie Ziegler as a severely autistic girl. The complaint seemed to me to be about representation, i.e Maddie Ziegler was not autistic so her playing an autistic girl was not right and her performance looked like it was mocking autistic people.

I have to admit that I felt the same, that her performance seemed to me to be mocking autistic people, when I saw the trailer. Then I asked myself why exactly did I feel that way?

Autism, as diagnosed by the DSM-5, has two main criteria, each having three levels of severity. I’m autistic but my diagnosis would be level 1 (requiring support) for both criteria if I had been diagnosed with the DSM-5. Someone like Music would undoubtedly be diagnosed as level 3 (requiring very substantial support). I have no personal experience and I do not know anybody who would be level 3. I have probably seen some level 3s on the train but I wouldn’t know what their diagnosis actually was.

I had no basis for feeling like Maddie Ziegler’s performance was mocking autistic people. Even if I knew lots of level 3 autistics, I still wouldn’t have any basis for feeling that way because, as the saying goes, if you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person. There is no way to know whether or not there is an actual autistic person out there that behaves like Music.

As for the movie itself, it was a pretty mixed bag. Structurally the film is a drama that has some music videos interspersed throughout. I never liked the music video parts, since I always felt like they were interrupting the story whenever they came on. Unlike songs in musicals where the characters are emoting through verse, most of these music videos only felt tangentially connected to the story.

Moving on to the drama parts, I thought that Kate Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr. did a pretty good job with their roles. I can’t say the same for Maddie Ziegler however. It always felt to me as if I could tell that she was acting out Music’s physicality. There was a lot of focus, especially in the beginning, on Music walking on tiptoe, but it felt like Maddie Ziegler felt it was unnatural. I don’t know if I’m just projecting or if Maddie Ziegler and Sia missed some small physical cue that autistic people who walk on tiptoes for what is probably some kind of neurological reason do, but the whole aspect of Music’s physical mannerisms felt fake to me.

That being said, I think Maddie Ziegler did a great job with Music’s emotion though. This film, even with all its flaws, made me tear up in the end. And it was not Zu’s or Ebo’s character arc that affected me. There was this eureka moment where I finally understood Music’s character, what she actually wanted, what she was actually doing, and it was profoundly beautiful.

There is some beauty in the world that is best expressed with words, others with film. This one, I think, could only be expressed with this weird fusion of film and music.

★★★★✰