The unsentimental triumph of 'Temple Grandin'

At least on paper, Temple Grandin sounds like one of those TV movies that makes you want to crawl under your couch and hide. It’s the inspirational story of an autistic woman overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. It stars a beautiful Hollywood actress de-glammed and clearly desperate for artistic credibility. Heck, the producers couldn’t even afford to shoot on-location: The movie was filmed in and around Austin, even though the story is mostly set in Arizona.

What a nice surprise, then, to discover that Temple Grandin is eloquent, plainspoken, beautifully acted and unexpectedly restrained -- it’s the best made-for-HBO effort I’ve seen since Angels in America. (It premieres Saturday and will air throughout the month.)

Claire Danes plays the title figure, a woman diagnosed with autism at age four, circa the early-1960s. The doctors urged that she be institutionalized, but her mother (played by Julia Ormond) resisted and worked doggedly to find her daughter the right mentors and teachers. Indeed, at the core of Temple Grandin is a stirring ode to a parent’s willingness to do anything for her child. HBO’s only mistake might have been in not waiting until Mother’s Day to premiere this.

Unlike most biopics, which span decades and have a hard time shaping their subject’s life into coherent narrative, Temple Grandin zeroes in on this woman the summer before she’s about to enter college. Skittish, yet fiercely intelligent, resistant to human touch, yet desperate for solace from the chaos she perceives to be all around her, Temple arrives at the ranch of her aunt (Catherine O’Hara) in Arizona. There she observes the cattle and horses, and discovers an unexpected affinity to these animals. They, too, need comfort from humans who don’t know how to give it to them.

As a study of how autistic minds work, Temple Grandin is entrancing: Temple processes the world as a series of rapid-fire images racing through her brain -- a notion that director Mick Jackson captures nearly perfectly, with bursts of quicksilver editing. This young woman is able to enter a cattle ranch or slaughterhouse and instantly visualize a more efficient and humane way to treat the animals, a skill that ultimately leads to her life’s work.

And while Temple Grandin isn’t without its share of biopic-y, triumph-over-adversity moments -- her college classmates are prone to make fun of her; the chauvinistic cattle ranchers think she’s a freak -- the filmmakers are smart to stay focused on this woman’s work. (The screenplay, by Christopher Monger and Merritt Johnson, based on two of Grandin’s books, teaches you more about animal husbandry and cattle inoculation than you would have ever thought you wanted to know.) Grandin absorbs the slights and slurs and insults and then discards them -- and instantly gets back to business.

None of this would work without the right actress; indeed, it’s easy to imagine Temple Grandin devolving into a cutesy and sentimental the story of an oddball who proves the tradition-bound men in her life wrong. But Danes seems to understand Grandin to her core, and she effortlessly captures her fragile sensitivity, her fierce pride, and her frequent frustration that she can’t entirely communicate with the people around her. The actress nails the emotional arc of her character so beautifully that you tend to forget the performance is also a physical tour-de-force. From her wide open, constantly darting eyes, to her awkward handshake and exclamatory greeting (“I’m Temple! Nice to meet you”) when she’s introduced to someone, Danes transforms herself entirely.

She is matched exquisitely by Ormond, an actress who never become the ingénue star she was supposed to become, but who now -- fifteen years later -- slips easily into the role of an older woman who struggles to mask her fear with dignity. David Strathairn, as one of Temple’s high school teachers, makes similarly affecting use of his limited screen time.

A quick scan of the other reviews online suggest that this is likely to be one of the most raved about TV movies of the year. (And here I was thinking I was the only one intelligent and thoughtful enough to appreciate such subtle work.) See it immediately so you can say you were one of the first. Just grab a few tissues, because if you're like me, you'll likely be in tears by the end of this deeply felt, almost perfectly wrought work.