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NOTES |
Another
story of how someone disabled changes the lives of
those around him/her. Alan Arkin plays a man who is deaf
and speaking impaired who has a friend with learning
difficulties. To be near his friend when the latter is admitted to a
mental hospital he moves. The father at the house he
moves into is in a wheelchair with a hip problem (which by the end of
the film is diagnosed as permanent). The young
daughter has aspirations and thinks Arkin will be her mentor.
Arkin takes pity on an alcoholic who becomes his friend and is later
reformed. The alcoholic is beaten up and treated
grudgingly by a black doctor who hates all whites. But then he asks
Arkin to help him communicate with a black patient who is a deaf,
speaking impaired and also in a wheelchair.
Interestingly much the sign language is not translated to us
the audience. Arkin accidentally discovers the doctor has
cancer and is the only person to know this. Then the
boyfriend of the doctor's daughter (she is a rebel against his
aspirations for her) loses a leg when he's put in gaol in leg
irons. At the end after the loss of his friend with learning
difficulties Arkin shoots himself.
As you can see this film has nearly every disability in the book plus
class aspiration, racism and protest. In the end, I think, it has
nothing much. It tries too hard, it's pretentious, it's too earnest;
and we don't get involved. We don't feel for all these people. And
Arkin's performance which needs to be good to link all the themes is a
monotone. Potential lost.
From Carson McCullers' novel of the same name.
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