Watched 'The Miracle Worker' again last week. Late at night. Cat by my side. On my own, which I like doing late at night with certain films like this one.
The opening visuals with the credits and music are stunning. Black and white. The iconic image of the blind Helen Keller, arms outstretched, reaching for something, wandering over the horizon and down the hill. And then her mother following.
Her coming into a room seen through the reflection in a large Christmas tree bauble. She reaches out. It breaks.
Legs kicking, heels pounding on the floor.
Sheets blowing on the washing line and becoming entangled.
And then The Scene. The battle of wills between deaf and blind Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, once blind herself, after several operations and eye drops and glasses, able to see.
The Scene goes on and on. Helen WILL sit down on a chair at the table and eat her food from her own plate with a spoon. She has never done this before and never been stopped from wandering around the table eating from other people's plates. Annie isn't having that. And it's violent. Looks improvised. Even the actors are suprised and desperate and shattered. It's not pretty. It's also funny and shocking.
And then there are the hazy images when the past leaks into the present as Annie is tortured with memories of the time she and her younger brother, Jimmy, grew up in a workhouse.
The only way Annie can reach Helen who is growing more and more distant by the day, is through touch.
The Miracle Worker, starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, directed by Arthur Penn in 1962 is highly recommended.
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