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'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore' film links language deprivation to deeper scars — 'Language is a privilege'

'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore' film links language deprivation to deeper scars — 'Language is a privilege'

Yahooa day ago
The documentary reframes Marlee Matlin's life, spotlighting joy, language deprivation, and authentic experiences through American Sign Language
When Oscar-winning actor Marlee Matlin was approached with the concept for a documentary about her life, she knew she wanted Shoshannah Stern to direct. By having her story told with a Deaf director at the helm, Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is a reframing of Matlin's story with an authenticity we've never seen before. While the film includes Matlin's rise to fame, her experience with substance abuse and domestic violence, there's so much joy in this film as the audience is immersed in this remarkable look at Matlin's life.
Stern's approach was to make a visual documentary that puts American Sign Language (ASL) front and centre, rather than using the more common traditional voiceovers. It's something that's never been done before, putting the first-time director in a position of crafting a film without any previous examples as a guide, but it was executed to perfection.
"I do have this opportunity that could really bring people into her experience, and rather than seeing our experience being Deaf women as something different or something opposite, or something as like the other, which is typically how we're described as Deaf women," Stern told Yahoo Canada through an ASL interpreter. "And so I made sure that I would frame that not as a challenge. ... A lot of people had kept saying, 'Oh gosh, that's not the way that it's done.' And for me I thought, well thank you so much for showing me that I really needed to find people that were able to see this as an opportunity the same way that I do."
But a source of inspiration for Stern was actually watching Matlin on set when she directed an episode of the series Accused.
"I saw Marlee directing in a way that I have never seen before," Stern shared. "I know there's an expectation with TV, like as an actress I had mostly worked in TV, and usually you have to move really fast and not as much support with acting choices or anything like that. ... But Marlee really just pushed all that aside and she followed her intuition. And she gave the type of support and leadership to the Deaf actors that I wish that I had gotten."
"She didn't look at her experiences that she's had with other hearing directors who had directed TV thinking, oh I need to do this just like I'd seen before. No, I think Marlee decided that she was going to direct in a way that she wanted to direct, and how she had wanted to be directed. ... So I thought, OK I don't have to just do what has been done before in documentary. I can really stay in touch with my intuition and do what my intuition and my instincts are telling me. And I felt like I had to make a film with empathy and reframe the form of documentary in a way that really put the way we experience the world front and centre, and allow the film to be really an immersed experience for audience members, so that they could understand how Marlee and I experience the world."
'They cannot imagine a world where people don't have access to words'
A core part of making this an immersive documentary is how the film puts candid conversations about language deprivation at the centre of the story. It's a connection that's really never been made in a film, with Matlin and Stern discussing the intersection of language deprivation with various moments in Matlin's life, including domestic violence and the pressure on Matlin when she was thrust into the spotlight after Children of a Lesser God.
"Having a conversation with Shoshannah really couldn't have been the same if I had talked to anybody else who didn't have the experience of language deprivation," Matlin stressed. "We have different upbringings, different family dynamics, but she understood what I was talking about when I talked about language deprivation, to the point where I didn't have to go into an in-depth detailing how it affected me."
"She never once in our conversations questioned me. She never once put me down. She never once put words in my mouth, or my hands, if you want to say, if you want to be ironic about it. ... That's why I felt 200 per cent at ease in sitting on that couch. ... When I talk about the issues of accessibility, of being thrust by the Deaf community to decide what it is that I have to say about our community, ... and I didn't even know that there were words or language having to do with so many things happening in my life. ... I was sort of left to navigate on my own. It took time. And there were people to guide me, a few people to get to the point where I got things done."
Stern added that the language deprivation piece of the story was something she really wanted to "make clear."
"Whenever I had talked about this film and I had been talking about Marlee's story, I had said there's been this assumption, because how it's been for everybody else, ... that language is a right, something that people get from birth," Stern stressed. "But within our community, the Deaf community, language is a privilege, and it should not be that way. And I think that's something that I've felt like the world has gotten wrong. Intentionally, no, but they cannot imagine a world where people don't have access to words."
"So often I see our experience represented on screen always being like, 'Oh, poor Deaf person.' The biggest challenge is that they can't hear music, and that's not the truth. ... The biggest challenge is that we don't have access to words, and without words how are we supposed to understand ourselves? How are we supposed to understand the people around us? How are we supposed to understand the world? How are we supposed to understand right from wrong? And so that was something that I had to explain over and over and over again. Whenever we were pitching this story to other people I had to say, 'Hey, you know, this is what we're up against.' ... I realized this has to be a part of Marlee's story, ... and it happened organically. ... I'm a survivor as well, and I didn't understand until much later in life, until I had access to Deaf-led groups, Deaf-led organizations that were familiar with domestic violence, that three out of four Deaf women experience domestic violence. And I believe the reason is because of language deprivation. That's the connection. And so if people understand, harm can come if you don't give a child access to language, any language, it doesn't just have to be a spoken language, then harm can be reduced."
'When you live in a world that wasn't made by you or for you, you hold on to joy'
But while Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore handles the challenges in Matlin's life with care and authenticity, this is an incredibly joyful film, especially with the lively and enthusiastic conversations she has with Stern.
"Marlee really is a joyful person, and so I think when you live in a world that wasn't made by you or for you, you hold on to joy," Stern highlighted. "And so I knew that it was always important to make sure that we did have moments of joy being shown in this film."
"Especially when you find connection on a shared experience, that's joyful. When you're able to talk with someone who understands you in the same language, and you're not having to explain or educate yourself over and over and over again, that's joyful. That's joy. And a lot of times, when I'm seeing stories that should be told about us, but they're written by other people with different lived experiences, they think that when Deaf people get together they just talk about how hard it is, and how sad they are. But I grew up in a family of all Deaf members and we laugh so hard all the time in our house. Deaf people, when they're together, they are happy, and that's the human experience. ... So it was so important for people to be immersed in that type of joy that Marlee and I are able to experience, and I think that's able to help other people access our challenges better too."
"The fact that when I have a conversation with anyone who speaks my language and is Deaf, ... it's the connection that's important, that brings me joy," Matlin added. "It's satisfying, the fact that I'm accepted by the other person, the fact that my heart is whole when I get that experience."
"But the bottom line is that ... when I connect with hearing people and Deaf people, really any person, ... as long as we are nice to each other, show our mutual respect and empathy, that brings me joy, simple as that."
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore is now in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver, with more cities to come
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