"Sound and Fury"
Heather Artinian is a precocious little six-year old who has decided that she wants to change her world from one of being deaf to hearing. The reason for her decision is a controversial medical device, the cochlear implant, which would help Heather to hear. With Heather's desire as a springboard, the fine documentary, "Sound and Fury," explores the struggle for identity of a deaf family in the hearing world. It also attacks the controversial issue of turning our children into robots dependent on the kindness of those who can hear, forsaking their soundless roots.
When one first hears of the subject matter of "Sound and Fury," a cure for deafness in children through surgery and implant, it sounds like a no-brainer. Of course, if a child is born deaf, the best thing, the right thing, to do is to correct that deficiency. The cochlear implant is installed inside the child's skull and is attached to an external connector that, in turn, connects to a Walkman-like device that the child must carry in order to hear. When implanted at a very young age, the device successfully allows the child to hear and, thus, speak. The problem is, as a child gets older in the deaf world, they become assimilated into it, making the value of the implant to decrease, proportionately, with age.
Heather's two brothers and her parents, Peter and Nita, are all deaf. Peter is a near-militant leader of the anti-implant deaf community on Long Island and is stunned by his daughter's desire to enter the hearing world. Nita is initially encouraging, but, when she finds out that implant would not work for her - an adult mind would find it nearly impossible to assimilate the cacophony of sounds that would invade their silent world - she joins Peter in his adamancy against the process. They also fear that their silent world, which revolves around American Sign Language, will grow increasingly isolated as their children are given the chance to leave the realm of the deaf.
So you say to yourself, "Wow, they're right to want to preserve a culture of necessity and keep their children close." Then, docu filmmaker Josh Aronson and his team shift gears. Peter's sister, Mary, and her husband are blessed with the birth of twins, but one of the babies is deaf. The hearing couple learn of the success of the cochlear implant and immediately see the device as a savior for their child. The whole controversy over the implant is focused on the Artinians and their nuclear family, both deaf and hearing.
Peter's adamant anti-implant stance is argued just as strongly against by his mother, who had to learn to adapt to the life of a deaf child and had first hand experience of the pain and the prejudice a deaf person must face in the hearing world. Peter wishes to preserve a world where he can freely communicate with his family. He also sees that the independent and adaptive world of the deaf is going to close in upon him and him and his family. Peter is, I think, justly afraid of being left alone, deaf, in a hearing world.
I find it amazing that a subject that, on the surface, is so cut-and-dried, turns out to be one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking documentaries I have ever seen. It presents both sides of the controversy in a fair, even-handed manner that gives ample food for thought. Each side's case is well represented in this familial microcosm of a process that can, indeed, change the world of the deaf. Unfortunately, the implant will leave those untreatable in a constantly contracting world that will garner less and less understanding or sympathy from the hearing world as time goes forth. Peter argues, too, that the process is extremely invasive and anything but minor, but this argument has to be discounted. As medical technology progresses, other, less invasive, devices will be developed, making Peter's a moot point. The real issue is the isolation and loss of a culture that has lived and survived among us hearing folk for thousands of years.
"Sound and Fury" does exactly what a documentary is supposed to do - open your eyes to another world unfamiliar to you. It does that and makes you do an awful lot of thinking, too. I give it an A-.
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