Vital Topics: Social Work & Film
by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD
It’s a given: Social workers face horrific days with our clients when we know better than to respond to the well-intended question, “How was your day?” For if we try, we may well be asked, “How can you spend your days like this? Why do you do this?”
My advice for these days: Go home; respond to only what is necessary; take a long, hot bath (whenever possible, pick a home with a tub, a highly undervalued retreat); and then visit Tom Hanks and company in his 2022 dramedy, A Man Called Otto.
Hanks has openly shared that his wife Rita Wilson and her family taught him to love—a primary theme of Otto—and the Hanks family is heavily invested in an uplifting and heartening escape from familial and societal cruelty. Hanks and Wilson are two of the film’s producers. The soundtrack album features the single “Til You're Home,” written by Wilson and David Hodges and performed by Wilson and Sebastián Yatra. Hanks’ son Truman plays Otto as a young man, dearly and convincingly.
Otto offers some twists and turns, both traumatic and charming, but plot and resolve are predictable from earliest moments. Hanks is introduced as a seemingly impenetrable curmudgeon of the highest order, one who manages to pick fights with everyone he interacts with and holds on to long ago grudges for dear life. We will immediately understand that his consuming irritable stance is a defense against overwhelming depression, which for Otto is not a new state of being. But, of course, Otto is played by Tom Hanks, the beloved Jimmy Stewart of this era, and you and I know immediately that a way will be found for his true nature to emerge.
The film opens six months after Otto’s cherished wife Sonya (Rachel Keller) has died of cancer. In flashbacks, we learn how Sonya and Otto met, all they loved about each other, and the horrific crisis they faced together. For Otto, life held no meaning before he met Sonya. Her death returned him to a forsaken state of “nothingness.”
Although the film does not have a character who is a social worker, it offers a portrayal of an extraordinary young, vibrant woman best understood as a “natural social worker.” To explain how and why this description evolved: During a fascinating lunch years ago with Michael Austin, a former dean of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work (now the School of Social Policy and Practice), Dean Austin used the term “natural” to reference those who are innate social workers without even knowing it. In 1994, a film starring Woody Harrelson, directed by Oliver Stone, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino was released. The focus was on unloved, abused, and traumatized children, branding them “Natural Born Killers,” the title of the film.
Appalled and infuriated by this ignorant, ugly, damaging, and dangerous depiction of children, and of course, knowing well that efforts to counter the perspectives of this powerful team would ever remain uphill, I decided to build on Dean Austin’s wisdom. So I began to speak and write about “natural social workers”—those who instinctively understand the necessity of love and protection for all children and do all they can, regardless of chosen professional direction (which often does include social work), to work toward and educate about this necessity. Otto brings us face to face with the best possible example of a “natural social worker,” his new neighbor, the very pregnant, very bright, and quite persistent and savvy Marisol (Mariana Treviño), who instinctively knows how to achieve an “Otto breakthrough,” and refuses to give up her quest.
Marisol is assisted by Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), her klutzy husband, not nearly as bright as Marisol, yet utterly loveable, and their two adorable daughters, Abby (Alessandra Perez) and Luna (Christiana Montoya). We also meet diverse neighbors and a determined, unrelenting activist, who, as impossible as Otto becomes, take him in their stride, and—despite all—have underlying affection for him.
A warning: A Man Called Otto should not be watched with young children, and viewing it with teens requires pre- and post- discussion. Because Otto longs to be united once again with Sonya, he attempts suicide four times. Each time, however, even when close to accomplishing his goal, an event that holds surprise and (as incredible as it seems) humor diverts his success.
This film is a second adaptation of the 2012 novel, A Man Called Ove, by Frederik Backman, first adapted in 2015 as a Swedish film of the same name. Because the “nothingness” consuming Otto’s early life, relived after Sonya’s death, is insufficiently explained in the Hanks production, I also watched A Man Called Ove. The plot line in both films is similar. The talent of cast members in each is extraordinary, and both adaptations offer a perfect depiction of a “natural social worker.” However, the Ove production clarifies the protagonist’s grave youthful pain, traumatic losses, and terrors in full dimension, and in this way fills in vital psychosocial gaps in understanding him.
“Otto” is many of our clients (and perhaps even family members and ourselves) in fruitless attempts to ward off loss and despair through a carefully crafted cover to keep others at a distance. He has been blessed with a perfectly suited life partner whose presence was cover, not cure. But the film offers authentic cure. In his last chapter of life, we see a man discover he is truly worthy of love. He learns to accept it and to offer it.
A marvelous ensemble cast urges that we sit back, relax, and view this best of our professional Selves—made possible through the innate skill of a natural social worker.
SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) and the Social Worker of the Year (2018) from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Best Article. In 2018, she was one of five graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice selected for the school’s inaugural Hall of Fame. SaraKay is the author of Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work (2nd Edition).