Children of a Lesser God (8 out of 10 stars)

Director: Randa Haines
Genre: Drama
Reviewer: Liz
Year: 1986

This sweet and well-acted film is set in a school for children with hearing difficulties. William Hurt stars as James, a teacher at the school. He falls in love with Sarah, his ex-pupil, now working at the school as a cleaner. She is completely deaf and refuses to try to speak when James offers to teach her. The film shows their developing relationship and the problems they experience living together.

While fairly slow moving, the film is engaging and interesting. The sequences of James with his class, showing how he teaches them to speak while they cannot hear the sounds they are making, are moving and very interesting. As Sarah communicates entirely through sign language there was a slight difficulty with letting the viewer know what she is saying, but this is largely overcome with some clever scripting which rarely sounds contrived.

Both William Hurt and Michelle Matlin make you care about the characters they play. Matlin, who is deaf in real life, gives an amazing performance as the strong, sheroic character Sarah who refuses to speak or lip-read just to fit into everyday society. James seems like a real character, who is well-meaning, but flawed, and struggles to cope with the difficulties of his relationship with Sarah. The film really gave me an insight into the life of deaf people, and the problems they much encounter doing every-day things that we take for granted.