Children of a Lesser God (1986)

Directed by Randa Haines. Starring William Hurt, Marlee Matlin, Philip Bosco, Piper Laurie, Allison Gompf, Philip Holmes, John F. Cleary, William D. Byrd, Georgia Ann Cline, Frank Carter Jr. [R]

Hurt plays a newly-hired teacher at a school for the deaf and hard of hearing, drawn to a stubborn young deaf woman (Matlin) who attended the school some years earlier and now works there as a janitor. The particulars of their attraction and friction (potentially mirrored by the troubled real-life relationship the two actors shared) is the selling point for this watchable but not always satisfying social drama based on the Tony Award-winning play by Mark Medoff. The love story has a good hook to it—the teacher wants her to use her voice to fit in with the hearing world, but she argues that he should accept her on her own terms and, to quote Martin Gore, enjoy the silence—and since it’s their story far more than the story of a teacher helping a classroom of kids, that’s good enough, I suppose. But the “deaf angle” is dealt with at the level of obstacle, and could have easily been swapped out for any other condition or syndrome of the differently-abled (Children of the Loosely Boweled, however, may not sell many tickets). Also, whenever anyone uses ASL in Hurt’s presence, including Hurt himself, he speaks the words simultaneously, robbing hearing viewers of an opportunity to temporarily enter their world; not even the crutch of subtitles is ever bothered with. In her first film role, Matlin earned an Academy Award.

63/100