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There are message films and films with a message.
The first is likely to bore you, while the second is apt to educate you without your noticing it.
Maybe when you're laughing. Or crying. Or whatever.
The producers of "Mozart & the Whale," which was filmed in Spokane two years ago, want to entertain us and teach us.
They, along with the rest of us, will find out whether they succeed beginning tonight when the film begins a limited run exclusively here, in Spokane Valley, Coeur d'Alene and Pullman.
Josh Hartnett, hot with last week's release of the action film "Lucky Number Slevin," stars with Australian-born actress Radha Mitchell in the Petter Naess-directed film. Production work was supplied by Spokane-based North By Northwest Productions.
Based loosely on the real-life story of author Jerry Newport ("Your Life Is Not a Label") and his wife Mary, "Mozart & the Whale" is a film that tries to be, as co-producer Frank DeMartini says, "a light romantic comedy."
Or, as he adds, "a commercial movie with a message."
The message is something with which the film's screenwriter, Ronald Bass, is familiar: people with emotional/mental disabilities. In this case, the disability is Asperger's syndrome - a neurological disorder sometimes described as a mild form of autism.
Bass won an Oscar for writing "Rain Man," the 1989 film that starred Dustin Hoffman as a man with autism so severe he was effectively isolated in his own personal world.
In "Mozart & the Whale," Donald and Isabelle - the characters played by Mitchell and Hartnett - are far more capable of functioning in society.
Even so, they are - well, different.
Some Asperger's individuals (such as Donald) are savants, capable, say, of doing complex mathematical calculations. Some are artistic (Isabelle).
Many, though, lack basic social skills, are compulsive, obsessive and often prefer order over change.
And just as Newport formed a support group for Asperger's individuals in real life, Hartnett's character does...