February 28, 2009 9:18 AM
The Miracle Worker - must see family movie
Since we're on the subject of teaching children about disabilities, here's a great way to start - The Miracle Worker
This is the final scene from the brilliant movie of Helen Keller's early life. Helen Keller's wealthy family had hired Annie Sullivan to help their daughter - blind, deaf and mute from infancy, and spoiled because no one knew what to do with her.
If you haven't seen it since you were a kid, you'll get so much out of now watching it with your own children. And if you have never seen it, you've missed two of the greatest female movie performances ever: Patty Duke as Helen Keller and Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan, the young woman determined to reach beyond Helen's deafness and blindness to touch Helen's soul, which was not handicapped at all.
Skip any remakes of The Miracle Worker . Nothing could ever transcend this astonishing 1962 classic.
The Miracle Worker speaks loud and clear of how important we ourselves sometimes can be in carrying out the miracles God intends for others.
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Posted in Disabilities, Movies | Permalink
Comments
My kids love the Miracle Worker! It's also provided some great opportunities to discuss discipline, parental expectations, and love. Great stuff there.
Newt
Posted by: Newt Sherwin | February 28, 2009 10:55 AM
In real life, Helen Keller was actually born with sight, hearing, and the ability to vocalize, but at about 18mos (I think) she got sick, and lost her sight and hearing. She stopped speaking because she could no longer hear. I highly recommend her autobiography--I read it as a young teenager and loved it.
Posted by: Elizabeth B. | February 28, 2009 2:10 PM
The movie portrays this accurately, showing the doctor departing at the end of the long illness and her mother discovering that she can't hear or see (my kids, 4 and 6 years old, needed some help to realize that's what they were trying to show), and the mother describes for Annie Sullivan how Helen had been starting to talk before her illness. Later on, after what the movie shows, I believe Helen was actually able to learn to talk, but in a very monotonic way, as she could feel the differences in how a person held their mouth while talking but not the differences in the vocal cords that produce different pitches.
Posted by: Newt Sherwin | February 28, 2009 6:00 PM
