Children of a Lesser God (1986)

Argentine title:
“I Will Love You in
Silence”

Directed by: Randa Haines

Written by: Mark Medoff, Hesper Anderson, James Carrington

Starring: William Hurt, Marlee Matlin, Piper Laurie

Running Time: 1 hour, 59 minutes

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: Being a disabled person myself, it’s always great to see Hollywood make movies about people with disabilities, and extra points are scored when they cast actual people with disabilities. It should happen a lot more than it does. LET MY PEOPLE ACT!!

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: Because. 

1 hour, 59 minutes later…: There is so much to say about this movie. Where do I begin? I guess, first off I am a little ambivalent about the choice of the director to have the other actors say Matlin’s lines as she acted them instead of going for subtitles. I don’t really know if subtitles would have taken away or added to the film, but it was kinda annoying to not have subtitles. It felt like I was listening to both sides of a sitcom telephone call where, because you only can hear one end of the conversation, the person has to repeat what the person on the other end of the line is saying:

Person We Can’t Hear: “I’m going to the store. Do you want anything?”

Person We Can Hear: “Do I want anything from the store?”

Person We Can’t Hear: “Oh, and I need to borrow some money, because I’m broke.”

Person We Can Hear: “You’re broke? Yeah. Sure. You can borrow money.”

Person We Can’t Hear: “WHY ARE YOU REPEATING EVERYTHING I SAY?” 

That sort of exchange is tiring in one scene in a sitcom, let alone in an entire movie. I guess I don’t know what the best solution to that would be. Some people like subtitles, and some people don’t. Maybe have an inner monologue thing happening where we hear what inside her head as she signs it? That might have been a good solution.

It was a very intriguing movie for me, because as I said above, I have a disability myself. I was born with moderate spastic cerebral palsy, and it was interesting to see how the ‘normal' people treated Matlin’s character. The scene that particularly struck me was the poker scene. After Matlin’s character beat everybody and was counting her money at the table, everybody around her was all, “Wow, James [William Hurt’s character], you really did a good job at teaching Sarah how to play!” in a tone like she was some kind of circus animal. I guess that was the point of the scene, but it did bother me a little. 

And William Hurt’s signing was a little distracting, but he did a good job of it considering he had to learn ASL from scratch for the movie. They covered it up as best they could by having his character say that he was rusty at ASL throughout the whole movie. He’s a teacher of the Deaf! He’s taught at all the good schools! He shouldn’t be that rusty at ASL!

Final Thoughts: 5 slices of pizza out of 6. It was a great story told with heart and feeling, and it did a good job on focusing on how much of a difference advocacy can play in someone’s life.