Sound and Fury - Reaction

A tv-documentary-quality docudrama about a deaf couple deciding whether to get a cochlear implant for their child. It was only vaguely interesting to me. Nevertheless, I think I'm, as one IMDB reviewer says, "better for having watched it."

At its heart is "the old story of parents either wanting their kids ... to either be like them or to have it better than they had it," as another IMDB reviewer puts it. While even-handed, it's emotionally heartfelt. It's hard to watch people making this type of decisions for their children.

At a higher-level, it's easy to see the film as exploring the defensive reaction of a closely-knit community/cultural group as its existence is threatened by technology and medical advances. Basically, it's about how the existence of separate worlds / separate cultures can lead to xenophobia, and about how a constrained world-view can lead to ignorance and pride.

Incidentally, I think there's something ironic that the film has no subtitles and thus no deaf person can watch it. By the way, it uses voiceovers to translate what's said using sign language.