Tamaso ma jyothir gamaya ....
A world of darkness, strange smells, touches and feelings that make no sense, no concept of words, things animate and inanimate, nay, not even the concept of life itself. And no ways to express feelings of hate or love. This was the world of Helen Keller almost from birth. How Ann Sullivan brought out the human being in her and gave this girl the gift of speech is the theme of the movie ’’The Miracle Worker’’.
The movie starts with a grim shadow of Helen on the wall. Moving slowly and uncertainly in a world of shadows and strange forms that move about her. Helen does not understand that what hurts her can hurt other too. The father is a strict disciplinarian and is at his wit’s end when Helen unknowingly puts her baby sister in danger. He threatens to send Helen to a school for the blind. Helen’s mother begs for a last chance, rightly suspecting that once helen is taken away from them, she will never return physically and mentally. They take a fateful decision ..... A letter is written to Ann Sullivan, a teacher at a school for the blind.
Empathy, not sympathy
Anne Bancroft, portraying Ann Sullivan, borders on genius. A hard woman who has seen too much in life to waste time on things like pity and condescension, she gets down to brass tacks with Helen from day one. Ann is fighting her own demons ; She has lost her brother and considers herself responsible for his death. As a child, she has faced a devil’s alternative and abandons her brother in favor of getting an education for herself ... losing him forever in the bargain. Ann is also not so sure of herself, she does not convey a sense of arrogance but a sense of desperation as she tries to grapple with a student who has not learnt anything in life and who has no sensory paths to receive her teachings. We see her trying to educate herself reading the books written by doctors. Her eyes, of course, have been operated on at least nine times and she can read with utmost difficulty. Her spirit though is indomitable. Having experienced blindness herself and the horrors of the ’’schools’’ for the blind, she is determined not to let Helen slide into that madness.
Like taming a wild elephant, Ann somehow manages to make Helen understand decent table manners and basic expression skills. For Helen’s complete transformation, Ann realizes that Helen must totally depend upon her. Ann’s requests two weeks alone with Helen in the outhouse. She explains to the mother and father that always living under the pity and condescension of her family members, Helen must now be weaned away from them to even begin to make sense of the world.
In the two weeks, there are angry physical fights between them. For Helen that is the only way to convey her displeasure. Ann retaliates and an uneasy peace develops between them. Helen tames down but Ann is far from satisfied. She knows that Helen will regress into her old ways if she does not understand the difference between ’’words’’ and their meaning. For Helen, ’’doll’’ just means a peculiar combination of finger signs, not a word representing a thing. On the last day, Helen’s father and mother are overjoyed on seeing Helen’s new behavior and flatly refuse Ann’s request for more time. ’’I still have her till 6 o’clock’’, Ann declares defiantly! I challenge you to see with dry eyes, the final scene where Helen associates water with the word ’’water’’ and the scene when Helen wonderingly learns the word ’’teacher’’.
The realism
Based closely on the real lives of the characters, it does not descend into cheap sentimentality. Ann, about her student helen, declares at one point, ’’No, I do not love her!’’. Because, she knows that once she starts to sympathize with helen she won’t be able to take the hard decisions to pull Helen out of her abyss of darkness. I was actually fascinated that I was looking at the fingers as Ann ’’drew’’ the words for Helen to understand.The whole movie is black-and-white, It is symbolic of the darkness that envelopes Helen and it depicts the starkness of the settings.
Ann’s recollections of her days of servitude at the poorhouse are conveyed beautifully with spooky, grainy images in the background. The desperation of her brother and innocence lost are brought out beautifully.
The verdict
The movie is a masterpiece and has to be seen by people who like serious cinema .... The movie is replete with wry humor .... When Ann Sullivan is waved off by her little blind students at the station, they have to be contiinuously moved in so that they wave in the correct direction as the train leaves the station, it brings a smile to the face and a lump to the throat .... The incredulity on Helen’s father’s face when he realizes that Ann Sullivan is half-blind herself..... Helen cleverly locking Ann’s door and running off with her doll .... An exhausted Ann coming out of the dining room and declaring ’’It is a complete mess inside .... but she folded her napkin’’.
Patty Duke and Ann Bancroft won Oscars for their portrayal of Helen and Ann Sullivan respectively. Patty Duke had played Helen for a year on stage, before playing this role in the movie, her performance is earth-shattering. The supporting cast lend their help in conveying the sense of a family braving a disaster of epic proportions. Never giving in and never giving up hope.
A comparison with ’’Black’’
I have seen ’’Black’’ and liked it initially. But Bhansali had made ’’Devdas’’, so there was no way he had ramped up so fast to make a quality movie like ’’Black’’. So, I got my hands on ’’the Miracle Worker’’ to see the original.
Bhansali’s grotesque, sentimental tribute denigrates Helen Keller’s life and struggle. For a more sensitive and intelligent portrayal, see ’’Sparsh’’ and ’’Koshish’’. ’’Black’’ then is an amalgamation of two Gujrati plays, one inspired by ’’The Miracle Worker’’ one original, where an ageing professor is slowly destroyed by Alzhiemers, both by Prakash Kapadia. Instead of the uplifting sense of courage and victory over deformities both physical and mental, it lapses into cheap manipulative, sentimentality.
Some signs of lack of originality: ’’Black’’ is in color (!!) ... Straight lift of the famous dinner table scene and others too many to count ... Rani Mukherjee stealing the place of at least one talented child actress (second actually, the first being stolen by the moron Hrithik Roshan in ’’Koi Mil Gaya’’, a lift of ET). The implied and unnecessary romance between Sahai and Michelle dilutes the victory over terror of living in a world of no light and worse, deprived of the sensory organs for conveying communication.
Contrary to ’’Black’’, the ’’Miracle Worker’’ can be watched with kids and is even prescribed as required reading in schools and almost always ends up as school plays at least once a year!!
Some good links
There are hundreds of good links you can find by googling the relevant names but here are some just the same
Portraits of Helen and Ann Sullivan - https://afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=194&SubTopicID=6&DocumentID=858
More portraits - https://afb.org/annesullivan
Inspirational lines ... few but precious -https://poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Anne%20Sullivan