Children of a Lesser God Reviews

It had been a while since I wanted to check this flick. Indeed, since it was nominated for the Best Picture Academy award back in 1986, I thought I should give it a try. To be honest, even though I thought it was pretty good, it was nothing really great. The first issue I had is that the whole thing was some obvious Oscar-bait (dramas based on handicap or diseases always score well with the Academy). I was also concerned at first because it started pretty much like 'Dead Poets Society' with the excentric teacher who becomes really popular with the kids and, of course, the conventional director becomes his nemesis... Thankfully, it didn't go that road and instead we got a rather striking love story involving the two leads, one hearing, the other obviously not. There were some very strong stuff here and William Hurt and Marlee Matlin were both really good in this. Still, I was missing something. I mean, the whole thing got stuck really soon because they were both stubborn (he wants her to speak, she doesn't want to...). I mean, at least half of the movie was about this conflict which was rather disappointing. For example, I heard that Hurt and Matlin became an item for a couple years but, apparently, their relationship was really stormy with some substance abuse on both sides. Now, that sounds a little bit more compelling. Finally, like Roger Ebert pointed out, you wonder why there is not one single scene during which William Hurt stopped translating what they say so you can finally experience this peculiar world of silence (I mean, it is not that difficult, you just add some subtitles and you are good to go...). Still, in spite of its flaws, it is probably the best movie dealing with this subject, the actors were excellent and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

The film starts off interestingly, and advances quickly, but flounders in the middle, and ends happily, but uninterestingly. The ambience of the small town is vivdly captured. But with hollywood happy ending, it stops the exploration of complicated lives of the children of a lesser good. William Hurt and Marlee Matlin have done excellent work.