Hear & Now: A Daughter’s Documentary
Posted by blk1 on May 9, 2008
Hear and Now, a personal memoir, written, directed and produced by filmmaker, Irene Taylor Brodsky, who documents her born-deaf parents through their decision to undergo cochlear implants at age 65, to bring sound into their lives.
A Sundance winner from 2007, HBO premiered this film on TV last night.
Brodsky uses home movies to bring her parents to us. From her opening narration we are engaged as she moves back and forth between their present and past lives.
Both 65, Sally and Paul Taylor have lived positive and productive lives. Meeting as children at a revolutionary school for the deaf, they reunite as young adults after college, fall in love, marry and become parents and grandparents.
Despite being deaf, Paul becomes an engineer and is responsible for helping to develop the TTY machine that is now a widely used telecommunication device for the hearing-impaired. Sally becomes a teacher and lends her excellent lip-reading skills to law enforcement investigations. The two raise three hearing children and all three have mixed feelings about their parents’ decision to have the surgery.
As a naive hearing person, I cheered their decision, anxious to see how sound would bring them to their dreams for a fuller life, to hear the world as they walked their property, or interacted with their family. Sally had found her own way to music, through the vibrations, I wondered what it would be like for her to hear it fully.
Their journey into sound is traumatic and causes a first-time separation between them. Paul has an easier time in the first months, Sally is more impatient and suffers a breakdown. As we move through that first year with sound, we understand their mixed feelings. The audiologist describes their struggle simply, “you have old brains.”
A powerful movie for me, a learning experience, created with love and talent.
I hope I’ve written enough to convince you to check your tv listings for the next showing of HEAR AND NOW or include it on a Net Flicks list.
Bravo Irene, a perfect movie to share on Mother’s Day.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
My best friend of 36 years had cochlear implant surgery on April 25th. This documentary could not have arrived at a better time to help us as friends and family members to better support her at this time. I wondered just how much psychological/emotional support was offered by the healthcare community before, during and after their surgery. It seemed as if they were left to fend for themselves emotionally. They were lucky to have each other for an empathetic ear (pardon the pun). This film helped me to realize my own expectations towards my friends new found sense. This is not a quick fix cure for deafness. Thank you sooooo much for this documentary. It should be shown to all candidates for cochlear implant surgery and their families.
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