Children of a Lesser God

One of the movies that I got the chance to record thanks to TCM's Women Make Film series was Children of a Lesser God. I think I had recorded it on my old DVR when TCM did the series on the handicapped in the movies, but never got around to doing a post on it before the old DVR crapped out. So now I finally did watch it to do a post here.

William Hurt plays James Leeds, who at the opening of the film is taking a ferry to get to an island where he's going to start his new job, that being a speech instructor at an institute for deaf youths. Supposedly he's good as he's worked at some of the best institutes, but he's also held a bunch of other jobs, as his boss Dr. Franklin (Philip Bosco) sees on reading his resume.

James' class consists of six high-school aged students, and James uses some unorthodox methods to teach them, such as using music, not just because deaf people can feel the rhythm, but to get them to sing (ultimately, five of the class do a couple of musical numbers for parents' night-type functions). And when one of the students says learning to speak can help him date hearing women, there's some humorous dialogue involving the young men's pick-up lines.

But the real action comes when James goes to lunch with the rest of the staff and students. In the kitchen he sees one of the kitchen staff gettin extremely angry -- in sign language. That woman is Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin). She was a student at the institute, and clearly quite bright and expressive. But something happened, and she turned into a woman who doesn't want to speak and has walled herself off into this dead-end job. James asks about her out of curiosity, but it's not his place to do anything.

But then one day he goes to the school's swimming pool and finds Sarah swimming naked. James eventually jumps in fully clothed, and it's clear that he's falling in love with her. The feeling might be mutual, but of course Sarah has a whole bunch of personal issues to work through. James eventually approaches Sarah's mother (Piper Laurie) to figure out what the deal is with Sarah, but that's a broken relationship too.

Sarah had an older sister (never seen in the movie), and all of big sister's boyfriends found that Sarah was good at sex, but that seems to be the only reason they had any interest in her. Sarah's dad walked out on the family, not being able to deal with having a deaf daughter, and as you can guess everybody else felt they might be responsible for that. And neither mother nor daughter is particularly thrilled that James is asking them about their relationship.

But James keeps pursuing Sarah, to the point that she quits her job and moves in with him. Things seem to be going well as the two go to a party together and Sarah even cleans up at poker, which she apparently never played before. But Sarah feels that she's being asked to do all the work of trying to fit into the hearing world, as opposed to James meeting her halfway, so she runs back home to mother.

Children of a Lesser God is a finely crafted movie, made unique that deafness as a central plot point was so rarely used in a Hollywood love story. (Yeah, there's Johnny Belinda, but Jane Wyman's character doesn't get to be a truly independent woman the way Sarah does.) Sarah and James both have completely plausible motivations, even when we can see how what they're doing is causing them some serious problems in their lives. Matlin won the Oscar, and Hurt gives a really good performance that got him a nomination.

If there's one problem I had, it's that some of the plot lines were left hanging, especially with James' students. One of the six is a bright but extremely introverted young man who, like Sarah, doesn't seem to want to speak. I expected to see the stereotypically happy ending of having him speak near the finale, but that never happens.

Still, any flaws I thought there were in the movie were minors ones. Children of a Lesser God is a worthy movie with moving performances, and I can definitely recommend it. It does seem to be available on DVD too.