Children of a Lesser God – 1986
This movie was pretty much what I expected. It had a good story, a well-crafted script, good dialogue, some excellent acting, and unfortunately bordered on dull. It was a romantic drama that went almost exactly where I expected it to go. The rocky tale of the film’s romance was only interesting because of the deaf vs. hearing angle. Otherwise, it would have been nothing more than average. It wasn’t a bad movie. It was just… predictable.
The two leads, veteran actor William Hurt, and in her film debut, Marlee Matlin, both did a great job. Hurt played James Leeds, a speech therapist and teacher for deaf and hard of hearing students. He is starting a new job at a school for the deaf in New England. Matlin plays Sarah Norman, the deaf janitor. She used to be a student, and is considered to be an angry, simple-minded girl.
It isn’t explicitly stated, but it seems that when James sees her, it is love at first sight. He almost immediately starts hitting on her under the guise of wanting to teach her to speak so that she can more easily function in a world full of hearing people. And while that may have been a true motive, his overt romantic intentions could not be mistaken. He was a bit sleazy, really. But Sarah resists his advances, at least for a while.
But James is persistent. Eventually, he wins her over and they begin dating. The drama comes when he insists that she learn to speak. She has an intense fear of speaking, saying that if she cannot do something well, she does not want to do it at all. It is a valid choice that James should have respected. In fact, he tried, but could not stop himself from trying to get her to speak.
Well, to make a long story short, the tension over this issue builds until two things happen. One is that she reveals that she has a history of abuse and rape. The other is that he has a habit of trying to control her and run her life, so she leaves him. She reconciles with her estranged mother, Mrs. Norman, played by Piper Laurie, and moves back in with her. But the lovers eventually realize that they love each other, and get back together. The end.
Unfortunately, as I sometimes do, I can’t help thinking, “what next?” After the movie ended, what would happen with the characters? Sure they realized that they loved each other, but the underlying problem was never resolved. The relationship is doomed face the same hardships and personality conflicts that ended the relationship the first time. Sure, James promises not to try to get her to speak any more, but he made and broke that promise more than once, a contributing factor to their breakup. I’m not confident that he wouldn’t do it again.
So anyway, if the story was predictable, and bordered on dull, what made it so good? It was Matlin. She was incredible. I have always liked her as an actress and here, in her first big screen role, she did not disappoint. She was amazing. She only had one spoken line in the entire film, and delivered all her dialogue through sign language. Not only did she portray stronger emotion than her co-star, she demanded my focus whenever she was on the screen. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Of course, Hurt did a fine job as well, but for me, she overshadowed him whenever they were on the screen at the same time.
Matlin won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and she really deserved it. It is interesting to note that at the time, she was only 21 years old, making her the youngest recipient of the award, and the only deaf woman to ever receive it as well. These little facts make me even more impressed. Again, I can’t say enough about how great her performance was.
The film also gave an interesting glimpse into the world of the deaf and the hearing impaired. Not an in-depth look, but enough to hold my interest on an intellectual level. There were some intimate underwater scenes in which James tried to experience Sarah’s deafness. And there was significant time devoted to James as he taught his class, giving personalities to some of his students, and showing us some of his teaching methods. And it really is a world unto itself, a world which hearing people rarely get to see or understand.