Premise: A teacher at a school for deaf children falls in love with a deaf employee there.
OK, what happened to William Hurt? His run in the latter half of the 80s was epic. He got consecutive nominations from 1986 to 1988 with a win that first year. He was in The Big Chill in 1983. He had a run of Woody Allen movies that was successful too. He managed to power a movie like The Doctor to be a box office success as late as 1991. Then he sort of went away. He's worked consistently since then. He got an Oscar nomination for A History of Violence in 2005, but he hasn't been a major player in any way for a long time. He's settled into a distinguished character actor. It just feels like it shouldn't've happened so abruptly, right? It would be like if, after Bradley Cooper's Oscar nominated three-peat from 2012-14, he did nothing but make Serenas for a decade and occasionally showed up as the 6th lead in courtroom dramas.
It's less surprising what happened to Marlee Matlin after becoming the youngest lead acting Oscar winner ever. No matter how terrific she is in this, there's only so much filmmakers can find (or choose to find) for deaf actors. As cool as it would be if she could just follow up with a The River Wild and have everyone just accept that the character happens to be deaf, that's not really how it works. She's carved out a pretty good career anyway, but it didn't open the kind of doors an Oscar normally does. (Then again, it's not like Monique did a lot after Precious)
For one movie though, those two were pretty great. I have no complaints about Matlin winning over the competition that year, since no part of me believes Sigourney Weaver for Aliens actually stood a chance. I'll admit, the "novelty" probably gave her the edge over more established actresses that year, but I'd have to think her work would've still been considered even if deaf performances were more common. The movie itself isn't anything special. It's just a romance story where one person is especially afraid of settling down and lets past experiences get in the way. If you take out the deaf angle, it's almost indistinguishable from dozens of other romance movies I've seen. Hurt and Matlin are what make it work.
I did have one question while watching the movie since I'm not around many deaf people. Do people who can hear really talk that much while signing? I mostly figured Hurt spoke so much while signing as a way to help the audience. Certainly, I think that's why he often repeated what Matlin said to him. Then, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that he'd maybe speak for lip reading purposes in case his signing was bad. Regardless, the movie made it feel pretty natural the way it did it.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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