Marlee Matlin plays a Deaf woman, Sarah Lee, whose damaging family experience has caused her to become so angry that even though she is an intelligent, sassy, independent woman, she prefers to mop floors in her old school. Jim Leeds, portrayed by William Hurt, begins teaching speech and language at a residential facility for deaf children. Jim’s teaching methods are effective, but unorthodox. I have to admire any teacher who allows an older teen student to call him disgusting names to his face, as long as the words are pronounced correctly.
He is immediately intrigued by beautiful Sarah, a witty and prickly alumnus who works as a cleaning woman at the school. They become lovers, but their relationship is marred by expectations on both sides. Jim really is all about sound. The posters in his tiny home all feature musicians or musical instruments. He loves the music of Bach passionately. His career is about bringing speech to non-speakers. Sarah is totally deaf and revels in her silence. She rejects any effort to get her to speak, and the viewer is shown the reasons for this.
In the only scene where she makes sound, the result is devastating. Piper Laurie portrays Sarah’s mother in a performance that quietly brings out all the pain of their relationship. Her expressions and body language said so much more than her words. You could tell she really loved Sarah and was frustrated that she didn’t really understand her. She also had a little bit of the “bury your head in the sand” approach to Sarah’s deafness. Jim translates most of the signed language by speaking out loud when he signs or is signed to.
This causes the scenes when he does not do this to give the viewer a sense of being shut out, and is very effective. As a hearing speaker in love with a deaf non-speaker, Jim makes promises he can’t keep. Sarah, in spite of her tough demeanor, is actually very fragile. Sarah was determined to have the world accept her on HER own terms and simply turned her back on it when it did not. She couldn’t understand why people seemed to define and categorize her by her deafness. She was so much more than that and Jim’s character was sensitive enough to recognize that.
His character was a little condescending and pushy, and I can see where he would get on any girl’s nerves because he was not a good listener. He wanted Sarah to be the person he thought she should be and justified it under his guise of “helping” her to cope in a hearing world. She was smart enough to figure him out and reject his attempt to mold her. You could feel Sarah’s loneliness in her silent world and you knew that she wanted love, friends and happiness just like the rest of us, but didn’t know if she would ever get them. Sarah is contrasted with the other Deaf people who are working on their speech.
Although he signs, Jim is highly dogmatic about the primary necessity of speech. The other Deaf people come across as disabled in comparison, their speech flawed compared to Sarah’s eloquent and expressive signing. Their vocabulary is basic; in one scene their attempt at signing delights the hearing audience as they imagine the Deaf kids getting closer to being “normal”. Jim has falling in love with Sarah’s strong and commanding personality, but paradoxically still treats her in a patronizing way, aiming to “improve” her by working on her speech.
It becomes a battle of wills between them as Sarah seeks to have autonomy over her preferred medium of communication. Even so, the dynamic of the relationship spurs Sarah on beyond the narrow horizons of her menial job. To me, she portrayed the disillusionment and anger of being pampered by some and rejected by others. I also understood she used sex as a way to explain to men that she was a real woman. As the movie progresses, the story gets more complex–and better. Jim starts to fall for Sarah and visa-versa. Their relationship however, is not an easy one.
Sarah continues to refuse to speak and grows depressed. The middle forty-five minutes of the film is basically this: Jim talks to Sarah, Sarah gets upset and walks out of the room and then they make up. This cycle happens about four times and does not get more interesting, which is one of the few negatives this film has. The other is the music, since Sarah doesn’t talk, the conversations are mostly silent (except for Jim’s narration of Sarah’s words) so the filmmakers decided to blast the audience with a heavy soundtrack made for a worse film; which, at times ruins the drama of silence.
I really admired and liked Sarah’s character. It gave us a brief glimpse into a deaf person’s world through some extraordinary scenes: Sarah swimming and describing to William Hurt exactly how she imagined waves sounded, and getting it right; Marian Lesser communicating only in sign language at the party which gave William Hurt’s character a chance to see things from another perspective. I think he learned that there is more than one standard way to live and enjoy life and being unable to hear isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a person.