Rain Man

Rain Man

Until now, Dustin Hoffman's most memorable performances have come in roles where he can lose himself in the physicality of the character he plays. Think of his desperate actor turned female impersonator in "Tootsie," his scuzzy Ratso Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy," his pushy Carl Bernstein in "All the President's Men," even his dewy Benjamin, dodging plastics in "The Graduate." And then go see him in "Rain Man," where he turns in a staggering performance as an autistic man yanked from a cocooning institution onto the road by his angry young hustler brother, played by Tom Cruise, who wants to finagle a $3 million inheritance away from him. It's Hoffman's most exposed performance in that he must work almost entirely with his character's landlocked interior life. Given the nature of autism, his character avoids connecting with the outside world, avoids even eye contact, hiding in the security of rigid rituals. As the dysfunctional Raymond Babbitt, he has no traits to play, none of the usual characteristics actors use as handles to their characters, unless you count the fact that he's a whiz with numbers. I was almost going to say that he can't play to any of his fellow actors. What really happens is that he can't play to them directly. But he soon gets a wonderful tension going between the threatening messages he gets from the forbidding new environment he's dragged into, and the rituals behind which he hides. Throughout the picture, he says little but "Yeah," "I dunno" and "Uh- oh." But he makes those words speak volumes. Listen to the different ways he pitches the word "Yeah," making it at different times convey eloquent immediacy, dread, pleasure, expectation, anxiety and defense. His performance is brilliantly nuanced. Mostly, it's dread that Raymond experiences, and the few times he bleats with terror at being pushed into new situations are heart- stopping. Cruise, as his desperate younger brother, furious that their father willed his fortune to the autistic Raymond...