Children of a Lesser God (1986)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer-1:28
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	114:06
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:33)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Randa Haines
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	William Hurt Marlee Matlin Philip Bosco Piper Laurie
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Michael Convertino

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Slovenian French German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Bulgarian Icelandic Portuguese Hebrew Greek Croatian Arabic Turkish Polish Italian Spanish Romanian Czech Hungarian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    It had been quite a while since I had seen Children Of A Lesser God, and I remembered enjoying it, so I was looking forward to it. Perhaps too much? I was somewhat disappointed this time around. Perhaps this is a film for which you must be in an uncritical frame of mind? Dunno. Please, don't expect too much, and maybe you will enjoy it more.

    James Leeds (William Hurt) is a teacher, newly arrived at a school (interestingly, I don't believe the school is ever named). He is a teacher of speech to profoundly deaf young people (one assumes these are the children of a lesser god referenced in the title). His opening class is quite entertaining; indeed, his teaching methods are varied, and often amusing. The school superintendent, Dr Franklin (Philip Bosco), takes exception on occasion (loud music is disruptive, even in a school for deaf students) — his opening comments to James were on this subject.

    The school is placed somewhere that looks a fair distance from a big city — there's some attractive scenery around. James takes a ferry to and from work, it appears, giving us the opportunity to look at lots of water

    Fairly early on, James notices a young woman called Sarah Norman (Marlee Matlin). She is working as a cleaner at the school, despite having been a bright student. James, with his enthusiasm and eagerness to do good (whether it is wanted or not), wants to teach her to speak. She is not interested. He persists. And persists. And a relationship develops between them. This is not a case of a teacher falling for a student — she's 25, working, and an adult. Things aren't simple, though.

    The trick they use to translate the sign language, having the speaking party say what both sides are signing, is effective, if a little tedious at times.

    Marlee Matlin is an excellent actress — this was her first film, after playing the role on the stage, and it won her an Oscar, so I'm not the only one to think so — just as well, given that she doesn't speak. This role suits William Hurt, too (far better than some roles he has taken, like Duke Leto Atreides...). There's nothing wrong with the supporting actors, either, both hearing and deaf (good to see the deaf characters being played by deaf actors). So the acting is not the problem.

    My real problems with this film lie with the script, and possibly the direction. The script doesn't hold together completely — things happen too fast, too easily, and without adequate justification. Daring though it is to suggest, perhaps they thought that the novelty of having deaf actors, and the subject matter, would make up for an inadequate script. It doesn't. There's more than enough material to make a good storyline, and much of it is presented well, but there are gaps, pieces that don't hang together well. As I understand it (not having seen the play), this film has reduced some of the pain — I suspect that was a mistake.

    You may have heard that there is some nudity in this film. At least one person I mentioned the film to thought it was exploitative and unnecessary — that may have been an over-reaction, part of the "protect the deaf person" over-compensation. I don't see it as exploitative — there is very little nudity, and it's justified in the storyline.

    Funnily enough, I'm still going to recommend this film — with its faults, it is worth seeing.

Video

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. As is often the case, the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, but that's close enough.

    The picture is soft, but not enough to be unattractive. Shadow detail is quite limited — dark colours drop off into black too quickly, and the entire picture is a bit too dark to start with. There's quite a bit of light grain. There's no low level noise.

    Colour is dull, perhaps because of the environment — it looks like it was filmed in northern Canada in winter, with dull light, and darkish colours. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are film artefacts. The most noticeable are those in the opening Paramount logo, but there are tiny spots, specks, and flecks throughout the film — you're unlikely to be troubled by them. There's no aliasing of note, only a touch of shimmer at 75:48, and no moire — that softness of image is good for something.

    There are subtitles in twenty three languages, including English in both subtitle and caption form (quite appropriate, given that Marlee Matlin is a spokesperson for captioning). I watched the English captions. They are occasionally abbreviated, but they are very easy to read and well-timed.

    The disc is single sided and RSDL-formatted. The layer change is located at 60:33, and I had to use a player with a layer indicator to locate it because it is superbly hidden.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are soundtracks in five languages, including English. I listened to the English soundtrack, which is Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded. As far as I can tell, this is a mono soundtrack — I heard no stereo separation.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand (even easier, I imagine, if you understand American Sign language). There are no audio sync problems.

    Michael Convertino's score is not an outstanding effort. Much of it sounded brittle, and a bit distorted, to me. In some ways, I think this film might have been more effective without a score, but that would have been a very daring choice.

    The soundtrack is not coded to use the surrounds or subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static and silent.

Trailer (1:28)

    This trailer is our only extra — hope you like it...

    As far as I can ascertain, the Region 1 disc is pretty much equivalent to this one, but is rather more expensive. If you want this film, you can get either version, but the R4 is less expensive.

    Children Of A Lesser God is an interesting, but flawed, movie, on a fairly poor DVD.

    The video quality is not good, but not bad either.

    The audio quality is adequate, but nothing more.

    The extra is minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall