Children Of A Lesser God: Ultimately Romantic review
One of the best love stories ever made, the film that won Marlee Matlin an Academy Award for Best Actress at the age of 21, is Children Of A Lesser God; Ankur Agarwal brings to you the not-often remembered film, a film more in sign language than the language of spoken.
She dives in the water not with abandon, but wrapping a world of silence about her, a world of silence given to her, and a world of silence chosen by her. And when she dives, you plunge too along with her in that world of silence, that obstinate world of silence and past hurts, that world where you have to ask her permission to enter into.
Children Of A Lesser God has always been the best love story ever made for me. More than about a deaf person and her teacher, it's about love, the courage that you have to gather and that you do gather when you're in love with somebody. It's surprising so few people know about the film or talk about it, it's more surprising that it is not regarded as the greatest love story ever made. Marlee Matlin stars as the vehement, wilful, obstinate, extremely intelligent, and very beautiful deaf girl - and William Hurt the teacher who loves Bach, who is unconventional, who yet wants to "change the world" but knows and is reminded that their job is to help a few kids out here, not to change the world, a man who is, simply put, "compassionate." The film's whole point is love. Hurt cannot now listen to Bach, how does he explain it to Marlee? A life of such an intelligent woman, yet marred by a complex of the world laughing at her, of her being something less than the "speaking" world, of the insecurity that no one can feel hurt "from" her - and hence who decides to keep a glass barrier, to not to be hurt at any cost.
The film takes grip of you with the beginning itself. The window shutters clash on a stormy night, but oblivious to it all a girl, a young desirable girl, is sleeping comfortably. And then the beautiful morning, with the superb background score of the film, a man, a tall, handsome-ish man stepping out in his car to the new frontiers. The film takes hold of you immediately. Philip Bosco as the man running the college for the deaf and dumb does an excellent job, a man who was probably himself once upon a time like the new teacher but who now knows the compromises, the hardships, the sacrifices that one has to make in life. Bosco is in fact an interesting study, and precisely because he is so under-utilized in the film. When I say "under-utilized" I don't mean in the literal sense, for the director has used him to a perfect degree - I only mean by "under-utilized" that a director would have been tempted to use him so much more. Bosco keeps on warning Hurt at each and every step, yet he is as if ogling secretly, envying secretly, loving secretly that it is not in Hurt to be daunted but press on. Another interesting character is that of Piper Laurie, playing the mother of Marlee Matlin. Piper Laurie's greatest strength has always been her too natural, understated acting - any other actor would have brought a sore flourish in the film, marring the whole effect. But Laurie does it with so much self-effacement, playing the part of a guilty, atoning mother, who now wants to play a part in making her child's life good.
Without stifling the viewer, the film manages to come more from the heart of the dumb heroine rather than the hero (the old classic Johnny Belinda had also this difficult characteristic though in a less marked manner — in that Jane Wyman film the effect was achieved more through the camera rather than absence of sound, more through showing vast, flat, beautiful landscapes rather than through the raw vitality of two persons trying to communicate with each other). Most of the talking in the film is through sign language! And to aid the viewer, the hero of course speaks in undertones most of it, but still those sounds of dialogue do not obtrude since the story itself provides that the hero is slow to comprehend sign language while the student is very fast, very able in it. So he is simply talking to himself, interpreting to himself whatever Matlin is saying, and the viewer is the beneficiary. The attempt to keep most of the film in the soundless world of Matlin is excellent and it has surprisingly succeeded, another testament to the director's abilities.
Beautifully shot, the underwater photography in the film is a delight to watch. New England again makes itself feel, although the film was probably shot in New Brunswick; the film's grayish outdoor atmosphere too much reminded me of another great, Love Story. It's a film to lose yourself in, and to emerge from it refreshed, stronger, ready.
