SPOTLIGHT ON DEAF ACTORS
When it comes to studio movies not much has changed in 30 years since Children of a Lesser God
Millicent Simmonds doesn’t like scary movies, but it’s not because they frighten her. The cawing of birds, the heavy breathing on the phone, the dun-dun-dun-dun of the approaching shark — these are largely lost on Simmonds, the 14-year-old ingénue who has just made her debut in Todd Haynes’ “Wonderstruck.” She is deaf.
“Scary movies depend on sound a lot to scare people,” she said recently, signing in a FaceTime interview from Poughkeepsie, New York, as her mother interpreted off-camera. “When I look around and see people are jumping in their seats, I think: Why? Why? Nothing happened!”
Access is a prickly subject as old as Hollywood, or at least as old as the end of the silent era evoked in “Wonderstruck.” Deaf and hearing audiences could delight equally in silent films. What’s more, deaf actors appeared frequently, always as hearing characters; five found regular work on screen, where facial expression and gestures signified more than moving lips. Charlie Chaplin cast the best known of them, Granville Redmond, in a handful of films.
In the decades since, deaf audiences have struggled for equal access, and not just to movies that rely as heavily on sound as scary ones. Closed captioning is widely but not unfailingly available in theatres; that should improve by next summer, when all theatres showing digital movies must comply with a new federal rule under the Americans With Disabilities Act. As for performers, ask people to name deaf movie actors — or films about deaf people starring deaf people — and you’ll probably get exactly one name and title: Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar for her turn in “Children of a Lesser God” 30 years ago. Then, crickets.
Now comes “Wonderstruck,” with its deaf star, deaf characters and homage to visual storytelling. The movie has cast a new spotlight on the hurdles facing deaf audiences, performers and storytellers in filmmaking, which trails well behind TV and streaming in every aspect of deaf experience.
Millie Simmonds plays Rose, a lonely deaf girl in 1927 New Jersey enamoured of silent movies and of one star in particular (played by Julianne Moore, the hearing actress who also plays the grown-up Rose). Rose’s story alternates with that of Ben (Oakes Fegley), a boy who becomes deaf when he is struck by lightning in 1977. In Brian Selznick’s book, which he adapted for the screen, Rose’s story is conveyed wordlessly in pencil drawings; Ben’s is shared entirely in words. In the movie, her story unfolds without speech in black and white, his with blazing ‘70s pop colour but — for nearly an hour — no dialogue.
“I was completely shocked by how little dialogue there was in the film,” Haynes said in a phone interview. To approximate a nearly soundless world before production, he and Oakes wore noise-cancelling headphones as they walked around New York one day. He became aware of “acute shards of visual information,” he said, though he wasn’t kidding himself that he knew what it was like to be deaf: “This was a thumbnail version of anything close to life.”
Like Rose and Ben, Carol Padden and her husband, Tom Humphries, who both teach at the University of California, San Diego, represent different deaf experiences. Padden, a MacArthur Fellow for her research in world sign languages, was born deaf to deaf parents and grew up in deaf culture. Humphries lost his hearing when he was six, had no deaf family and did not learn sign language until he went to college. The couple were advisers for “Wonderstruck,” both the book and the movie.
Humphries, in an email, said that the movie “succeeded way better than most,” but he also said that “you can’t achieve authenticity without much more participation of deaf people in all aspects of a movie about deaf people.”
Even films with deaf involvement can misstep by putting the hearing point of view first. In the summer hit “Baby Driver,” for example, the deaf actor and comedian CJ Jones is a scene stealer amid some Hollywood heavyweights. But Humphries pointed out that “the editing cut into CJ’s signed lines so much we often couldn’t see his signing” and added, “That’s reality, audiences are overwhelmingly hearing.”
Matlin said that “not so much” has changed since “Children of a Lesser God” when it comes to studio movies. In independent films, “where budgets are smaller,” she said, “risks can be taken, and there has been some progress.” A recent Ukrainian film, “The Tribe,” has gone further than any Hollywood movie. It was filmed entirely in Ukrainian Sign Language, with a cast of deaf actors, and no subtitles or voice-overs.
Still, Matlin pointed out that on TV and streaming services, “there are many, many deaf actors, writers, directors and producers — and lots of stories to tell.”
Millie Simmonds has seen neither “The Tribe” nor “Children of a Lesser God,” and she “never, never never” dreamed of being an actress. “I always wanted to be a cop or a fireman or do something dangerous,” she said. But here she was in Poughkeepsie, already at work in her second movie, “A Quiet Place,” with John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. She has no time to watch noisy scary movies, even if she wanted to.