#Children of a Lesser God

[thelandswemadeofpaper]

[bestperformances]

Marlee Matlin as Sarah Norman / Children of a Lesser God (1986)

Academy Award Winner as Best Actress

[dweemeister]

Children of a Lesser God (1986)

In narrative art that features individuals with deafness or hearing loss, these films tend not to portray such characters on their own terms, failing to centralize the story around them. Neither Jane Wyman’s character in Johnny Belinda (1948) nor Patty Duke’s portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962) frame their respective films; both movies rely on a hearing character to do so. Looking beyond the United States, the same is true of The Shop on Main Street (1965, Czechoslovakia) and the anime film A Silent Voice (2016, Japan) – once more, it is the hearing character who becomes the audience’s proxy. No deaf or hard of hearing actors played the roles referenced in this paragraph.

Such is also the case in Randa Haines’ Children of a Lesser God, with one significant exception – a deaf actress, Marlee Matlin, plays the deaf main character. In the late 1980s, such representation was a revelation, and simply unheard of. Matlin, deaf since she was eighteen months old, came to the producers’ attention after starring in a Chicago-area stage play. While auditioning for the role, she and actor William Hurt struck up a relationship – questionable timing, as both actors got the part (more on their troubled relationship much later).

Haines’ film, distributed by Paramount and from a screenplay by Hesper Anderson and Mark Medoff (adapting his own stage play of the same name), is a capable romantic drama with two great performances. Its portrayal of a deaf character by a deaf actress was indeed significant for its time; the decision to position the film through the hearing character’s experiences fails to distinguish it from its fellow films and numerous films since.

Somewhere in New England, James Leeds (William Hurt) arrives for his new job: as a teacher at a school for the deaf and hard of hearing. His enthusiastic teaching style rubs off on most of his students, as he emphasizes that, as important as it is to sign and read lips, they must also learn to speak. Also working at the school is Sarah Norman (Matlin), a former standout student who works as the school’s custodian. While the school’s hearing staff, for reasons initially unclear, dislike Sarah, the students appreciate her. James falls quickly for Sarah and they eventually begin dating, after a few rebuffs on her part. What follows is a romance where our two protagonists navigate through his desire to help her adjust to the world beyond the school walls and her lack of trust in others. Drifting in and out of the film are the school’s hearing principal, Dr. Curtis Franklin (Philip Bosco), and Sarah’s mother (Piper Laurie) to give both main characters advice, encouragement, and dramatic obstacles.

Children of a Lesser God suffers from its emphasis on James’ perspectives. Between James and Sarah, it is James who demands the most in any compromises between the two. When he first asks Sarah whether she would want to move in with him, James’ approach is, at times, more demanding than it is a genuine query. His insistence on Sarah speaking phonetically to hearing people, from the onset, seems to disregard whatever personal reasons Sarah might have for refusing to do so. Late in the film, the most heated discussion between the couple on this topic comes in perhaps the most inappropriate way – he wants to hear her say his name during sex. Both James and Sarah carry into this relationship sizable foibles and broken pasts, but the former’s communication style can be abrasive and domineering. At times, it makes Children of a Lesser God seem like yet another savior narrative.

Certainly, Sarah’s reluctance to speak phonetically is a defensive mechanism – one to shield her from the pain of past interactions with hearing people and a refusal to have anybody to speak on her behalf. The film also implies that she may be a survivor of sexual abuse. Matlin is magnificent in this role (my goodness, does she sign quickly or what?) and there are a few key scenes where, as Sarah, her character truly shines without James’ input. Interestingly, both scenes involve music. The first instance comes on their first date at a restaurant, when Sarah insists on dancing to “I’ll Take You There” by the Staple Singers. Feeling the vibrations of the music “through [her] nose”, Sarah grooves, eyes closed, to the music. Rather than shaking her hips and moving her head with the beat, she sways, and gracefully moves her arms to the song – released from the bounds of the musical and lyrical phrasing.

Later in the film, Sarah does not betray any irritation when James claims he cannot enjoy his favorite piece of classical music (in this case, the second movement to J.S. Bach’s Double Violin Concerto) because she is unable to enjoy it. Instead of showing her discomfort or lashing out, she asks James to “show [her] the music”, similar to how she “felt” the music on the first date. James fails to do so, but not for lack of trying. Here, Matlin, as Sarah, is fully observational – one can see, through her eyes and face, a sincere attempt to understand what the Bach “feels” like. Where others might point out Matlin’s emotionally fraught scenes in this movie as the best exemplars of her work (any of the fights with Hurt’s James, her jealousy while watching the school show, her reconciliation with her mother), Matlin’s command in these less dramatically important moments also deserve praise.

Matlin’s performance, however, cannot stop Children of a Lesser God from depicting Sarah as the otherized character that must change the most. The film, released in a decade of popular cinema with a more cavalier attitude towards relationship violence than previously seen, puts so little on Hurt’s James. It is fine to portray an imbalanced romantic relationship in a movie. But the film seems tepidly interested in Sarah in stretches, and fails to truly allow the audience to connect with her in moments where that might be possible. Additionally, whenever Sarah or anyone else who is deaf or hard of hearing signs in the film, there are no subtitles. Instead, it is up to James or another hearing character to verbalize the sign language – disallowing the opportunity for any viewer to find, in Sarah, a chance to see the events of the film through her. This, like CODA (2021; which incidentally also stars Marlee Matlin and concentrates on a hearing character, albeit a child of deaf adults), makes Children of a Lesser God a film not for the deaf or hard of hearing community, but for hearing audiences. Sarah’s deafness becomes an obstacle in this film – indeed, some of this is on the original stage play, but there surely were ways to address this.

The chilly New England atmosphere of this movie lends it a coziness that no stage play could possibly replicate. John Seale’s (1996’s The English Patient, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road) cinematography and Michael Convertino’s (1988’s Bull Durham, 1994’s The Santa Clause) electronic-heavy score (electronic-heavy scores tend to date quickly, and this is no exception), however, are merely functional. Children of a Lesser God, lacking in any technical accoutrements, relies solely on the strength of its actors and its adapted screenplay and the odd autumnal landscape of red-orange tree leaves and mist wafting over water in the early mornings. Director Randa Haines had never made a theatrical film prior to this, with her directorial career only covering network television and television movies until Children of a Lesser God. Her direction is here is unremarkable, but at least is sufficient for the purposes of this adaptation.

Hurt and Matlin began a romantic relationship shortly after auditioning for Children of a Lesser God – establishing a tricky situation of power dynamics on set during the making of the film. Matlin, seen as the ingénue, knew she had much to learn from Hurt (one year removed from his Academy Award-winning role in Kiss of the Spider Woman and one year away from Broadcast News) and everyone else on set. Matlin has always praised her fellow cast and crew members for that education in filmmaking. She moved in with Hurt shortly after shooting ended on Children of a Lesser God, but that was the beginning of the end of their relationship. The relationship, marked by drug and verbal abuse and rape, continued through the 59th Academy Awards in March 1987 (that evening, on the way home, Hurt questioned the legitimacy of Matlin’s Best Actress win, callously comparing Matlin to the other four nominees) but ended several months thereafter. In later years, following the publication of Matlin’s memoir detailing the worst aspects of their relationship, Hurt apologized for any harm he inflicted on Matlin and her family, wishing them all well. After Hurt’s death in 2022, Matlin reflected on her time making Children of a Lesser God and noted that Hollywood had “lost a really great actor”.

When Children of a Lesser God received five Academy Award nominations and won Marlee Matlin her Best Actress Oscar, speculation abounded regarding changes in the portrayals of deaf characters and opportunities for deaf and hard of hearing actors. Matlin was the incarnation of a potential groundswell of such representation in Hollywood. That groundswell has been less dramatic than anticipated (as are all such movements to address underrepresentation in American films), but Matlin’s win has, slowly, in its own way, opened a wealth of new opportunities for deaf and hearing-impaired actors in the United States in film and television. Children of a Lesser God might not be the revolutionary film that many non-viewers may have heard of. Nevertheless, its positive impacts continue to create small ripples through American filmmaking, belatedly, more frequently than ever before.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[theoscarsproject]

Children of a Lesser God (1986). A new speech teacher at a school for the deaf falls in love with the janitor, a deaf woman speechless by choice.

In many ways it's a challenge to write about this movie knowing the abuse Marlee Matlin suffered and survived in her personal relationship with William Hurt. It adds new shades to the power dynamic between the characters, and ultimately becomes hard to divorce from the story itself. Still, the cinematography's beautiful, and Marlee Matlin's performance is staggering, and while the script sings in parts, it feels fetishistic in others. I don't know. It's definitely one I'm still thinking about it. 6/10.

[sigurism]

Piper Laurie

1932-2023

[workin9to5]

[zionistsinfilm]

When you buy or stream The L Word, Quantico, Children of a Lesser God, CODA, Switched At Birth, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, Hear No Evil, Through Deaf Eyes, The West Wing, you're giving money to zionists. Marlee Matlin is a zionist.

[theotherpacman]

I just watched children of a lesser god (1986) and I am losing my miiiiind

it's about a guy who teaches Deaf people to speak and a Deaf woman who refuses to speak, and they fall in love but he never stops looking down on her or literally speaking for her all the goddamn time

the movie aaaaaaalmost almost almost made a deeply poignant statement about how people with privilege (here hearing people and men) don't even notice how it puts them in a position of power and leads them to look down on those without the same privilege (Deaf people and women) it was SO CLOSE to connecting the dots

but then the ending. FUCK that ending. it would have genuinely been a fantastic movie if she'd left him in the end, or even if he'd changed for her. but no. she went back to him and SHE apologized... for defending her personhood??? to a man who constantly denied it????? I am screaming

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today’s disabled character of the day is Sarah from Children of a Lesser God, who is Deaf

Requested by Anon

[Image Description: Photo of Marlee Matlin playing Sarah. She is wearing a red sweater and a black undershirt. She has long brown hair and blue eyes. She is sitting in a classes room and looking toward the left of the frame.]

[pitch-and-moan]

The Offspring of a Lesser God, At Least

An AI-penned remake of the 1986 romantic drama about the love between a teacher at a school for deaf children and the custodian, herself a former pupil of the school though not of that teacher. Without actors or a script, the film is just silent paper dolls moving around on screen with subtitles. It manages to strip the nuance entirely from the original film and is wildly offensive to the deaf community. This is done intentionally as the AI program writing the script calculates (later determined erroneously) that if there's enough backlash to the film, a certain percentage of the population will make it profitable simply buying tickets to piss off anyone that percentage of the population deems "too PC."

[thatgeekwiththeclipons]

Remembering Academy Award Winning actor William Hurt! ^__^

[filmjunky-99]

h a p p y b i r t h d a y

Marlee Matlin

24 August 1965

🎈🎈🎈

[pic: matlin as sarah norman, children of a lesser god, 1986]

[mad-prophet-of-the-airwaves]

Rest in peace, Piper Laurie (1932-2023).

[workin9to5]

That’s a new one for me 😂 [x]