Temple Grandin

Directed by Mick Jackson. US broadcast by HBO on 6 February 2010

“I'm not like other people,” declares actress Claire Danes as animal-behaviour expert Temple Grandin in director Mick Jackson's latest film. Unable to speak until age four, Grandin was diagnosed as autistic. Yet she earned a PhD, became an associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and has written best-selling books and articles on the behaviour and welfare of food animals.

Danes captures brilliantly Grandin's personality through details such as her robotic speech and stilted gait. The film gives her view of the world through clever cutting to everyday details, such as a ceiling fan or automatic sliding doors, which spook her in a way that she believes is characteristic of animals' perception. The film reveals that more than half of US livestock-handling facilities have been built to Grandin's designs. But it goes too far by presenting her as the originator of an entire field of science.

The film reifies the idea that people with autism have special insight, yet there is no scientific evidence for this. Grandin's ability to 'see' as animals do, to experience the anxiety of being herded, is made concrete and compelling. However, the brains of people with autism are no more like the brains of cattle than those of any neurotypical person, and there is no evidence that animals process sensory information as humans with autism do. Informed debate regarding animal-production practices cannot take place when some parties claim to have privileged, and thus irrefutable, evidence.

By romanticizing Grandin's autistic empathy, the film avoids answering how much empathy is possible in a US animal-production system that slaughters 10 billion animals a year. The film begs the wider question of why anxiety in cattle matters. Instead it relies on the cursory economic justification that better animal treatment saves money by avoiding stress-related injuries, and appeals for personal responsibility to respect an animal when we take its life.

Grandin is exceptional, but it is far from clear what that implies for other individuals with autism-spectrum disorders. Jackson's film brings to life her struggles to fight real prejudice. Unfortunately, it does not convey that it takes more than empathy to understand animal behaviour — it takes science.