User reviews

Greetings again from the darkness. Few things are more disheartening and frustrating than seeing a child neglected by their parents. When that child is deaf or hearing-impaired, the actions of such parents cross over to infuriating. Such is the topic of this gut-wrenching short film from writer Rachel Shenton and director Chris Overton.

While we usually assume parents are focused on the best interests of the child, this expertly crafted film shows us just how easy it is for everyday life to impact our best intentions. Four year old Libby (Maisie Sly) is the youngest child in a typically busy home. Work, school and activities keep the others swarming around her - leaving young Libby in an isolated state of confusion. Libby is profoundly deaf, unable to communicate with her family, and rarely even interacts. Her mother (played by Rachel Fielding) is the on-the-go type who wants her daughter to be normal, and absent-mindedly yells "Bye Libby" as she heads out for her next errand.

When social worker/tutor Joanne (writer Shenton) is hired to prepare Libby for school, it isn't long before the two are conversing through sign-language and young Libby comes alive ... playing in the park and asking for orange juice. It's a beautiful thing to watch unfold.

Early on, the film addresses that Libby "does not qualify" for a cochlear implant, which apparently was the last bit of effort her mother expended in trying to make her "normal". The film is beautifully shot and carries the strong message that with a bit of support, deaf children can be mainstreamed into schools - though I do wish some more attention had been given to cochlear implants. Ending with a couple of sobering statistics, it's refreshing to know that Ms. Shenton is an activist supporting the deaf community.

'THE SILENT CHILD': Four Stars (Out of Five)

A 20-minute short film about a four-year-old deaf girl, who's assigned a social worker to help her learn sign language, but her skeptical parents are highly resistant to it. This short was directed by Chris Overton and written by Rachel Senton. It's well made, but it's also quite depressing and frustrating at times too. The film deals with some annoyingly bigoted parents, that you learn to really dislike throughout the short (or at least I did). I also learned to really care for the young deaf girl though. It's well made and insightful too.

Joanne (Rachel Shenton) is the new tutor for a young deaf girl named Libby. Her mother is concerned about her learning sign language and would rather have her lip-reading. This leads to a conflict with Joanne who starts teaching the girl sign language.

This is an Oscar winning short. It's actually a very compelling two thirds of a movie. Shenton and the little girl are amazing together. It's emotional and it has a message. This would make for a nice stepping stone to a full length movie.

I must admit up front that I am not at all impartial in my ability to review "The Silent Child". Because I am the parent of a deaf daughter and am very acquainted with the subject matter in the film, the picture had a HUGE impact on me and I found myself crying during portions of the short. Even if perhaps I am not 100% impartial, the film earned a nomination for Best Live Action Short from the Oscars and I am rooting for it to take home the statuette--because of the quality of the film and because its message needs to be spread far and wide.

The story is about a cute little girl named Libby who lives in England. Her family is very well off and Libby is about to begin school. However, there is a problem...Libby is profoundly deaf. Because of this, a social worker has been assigned to work with the child. Soon it becomes apparent that the family (the mother in particular) want some miracle to occur...for Libby to hear and talk, though this just is very very unlikely. Plus, with the family refusing to learn sign language and just hoping all works out, things look pretty bad for Libby...even after she begins to blossom and open up during the time she works with the social worker.

The themes of this short are how woefully inadequate the school systems are to handle the needs of a deaf child and well as how woefully inadequate many parents of deaf kids are to be parents. Everything I saw in the film seemed familiar to me...such as the fact that the vast majority of deaf kids have parents who never learn to communicate with them and how isolated deaf children can be. While the problem in the US is not quite as severe as it is in the UK (here we have generally had little difficulty getting interpreters and other assistance with our daughter due to her disability), it still hits quite close to home. And, like Libby's family, I've known families who simply refuse to do anything to admit that their child needs remediation.

Overall, extremely well made, insightful and sad in many, many ways.

"The Silent Child," Chris Overton, Rachel Shenton - A beautiful film with an important message about how deaf children need support and assistance in life and in school in order to develop fully to their potential, and the serious negative consequences that lack of support can have. I found this film to be quite touching. Beautifully directed, acting was phenomenal. Rachel Shenton should be a star. This is my personal pick for the live-action short film Oscar.

How often do you sit down and watch something, agree it's fundamentally incredible say it deserves to win an Oscar and it never does. Fortunately for this superb presentation justice has been served. The film itself is sensitive, thought provoking, and genuinely gives you a reasoned insight into what life must be like for Libby, the frustrations and struggles, but also the truth that the human spirit seems able to overcome anything. A heart breaking watch for most of us, but such an important message shared. Young Maisie Sly is absolutely incredible, how proud must her loved ones be of her. Wonderful.

What a wonderfully made and beautiful movie. I am a 38 year old male reduced to tears within minutes. Well done on bringing awareness in such a beautiful way. Can't stop thinking about the movie.

I knew nothing about the movie when I started watching it. As a viewer, we're slowly discovering the family, the 'helper', and then Libby's world with the sound mute. The statistics at the end of the movie felt like a cold shower. I hope it's a wake-up call to become a more inclusive society.

I watched this in a sign language class at my college. I've always wanted to communicate well with deaf people and this film shows why that is so important.

The feelings of loneliness expressed by the young actress are true to life. Many deaf ones cannot communicate with the general public, not because they don't want to, but because no one understands them. This film captures that and provides a powerful message why we need to try harder to include the deaf community by trying to communicate with them. The Silent Child is an amazing and emotional film that needs to be seen. It's realism is outstanding and it's message compelling. Thoroughly deserved the Oscar.

The Silent Child is probably the lessor of the five nominated films for the 2018 Oscars for the simple reason that it's too... preachy. The story of a young deaf girl in a fairly big well-to-do English family who connects with a sign-language interpreter (or it may be the other way around, or both, I think the woman is the main character but it's hard to say exactly) is easy enough to pull on the heart-strings, and that's the problem. It could be something that might make for a more engaging subject as a feature, to see this relationship unfold over time and to get to know the parents more. Unfortunately in the scope of a short, even one as long as twenty minutes, we don't see much more of the parents outside of 'Yeah, sure, teach our kid, but you have no power and we'll decide and rule for "what's best", etc' and it's typical and not interesting.

The ending is certainly a tough, tragic beat, but it may also simply be at a disadvantage with the other nominated films; I want to judge this on its own, and on its own it's a safe, sappy little piece of melodrama, right down to the music. But one can't help but compare it to the others since it's part of the program that screens with all of the other nominated shorts, and in this group of also largely issue-directed but also stronger and more forceful in scope (school would-be shooter and African terrorists are tough competition, it falls up short. It's not particularly badly made and it's heart is in the right place, and yet it's too trapped in sending a message that, frankly, shouldn't sound like such a big deal.

Introduction: The short film The Silent Child (2017), 20m, a brilliant low budget film ($10k) made by Chris Overton, with a pleasant play and a fantastic multi-layered screenplay of Rachel Shenton, great cinematography by Ali Farahani, and impressive music composed by Amir Konjani, was truly deserved to achieve the title of the best short film at the Oscars 2018.

Plot theme: The theme of the first layer of the film can be seen as a detailed and pathological approach to the problems of deaf or hard-of-hearing children. Only the very same sentence that Joanna hears from Paul that the reason why she was called to this house, hasn't been to understand Libby but to help Sue feel more comfortable in controlling affairs, can represent the depth of the problem of these children. The filmmaker plays his impressive role well by presenting brief but tragic statistics in the end credits of the film. Although this layer of the film is capable of a detailed critique of the exact details of the plot, cinematography, and music of the film, I prefer to have a metatextual look at the symbolic theme (second layer) of the movie in my short opportunity because it may be in shadows and less visible.

Meta-textual layer: In my view, this film with its elaborate use of symbols and characters, expresses another story of reason in opposition with love, and warns against the fall of the meaning of life and the tragedy of forgetting love! Some of these used symbols are:

The mother as the motherland, procreation, and affairs of sensory including reason. She is an entire and full-time controller who is very willing to turn anything into her own language and logic, in order to master it. With this ignorance, she misses the opportunities in front of her to accept the special language of love (Libby) and enjoy this tenderness, and even considers the messenger of this truth (Joanna) as a disturbing threat.

The deaf child (Libby) as the element of Love, the innocent child that is silent from speech but susceptible to miracles, she is from an unknown lineage and the result of the bond of odd but alien love!

The helper girl in red (Joanna) as an element of femininity, who understands love and finds it (Libby) easily behind every tree while the closest members of her family are unable to understand her.

The family and society as ego and superego, a language structure powered by laws and ideals, but just bring busyness and coldness of daily routine, and its members only seek to weaken the other and acquire a position of greater power and control.

Sign-language as a symbol of the intuitive love language.

The school, a symbol of prison show which imposes a dictatorial regime on its captives to restrain love and homogenize all members of the society of the modern world.

The filmmaker has depicted the presence and absence of love on the roads of Joanna's route with sensory and visual presentation, and the audience subconsciously finds the atmosphere of the movie foggy or clear in accordance with hiding or finding love during the story. It can be seen that all the names of the story have been chosen very carefully according to the mentioned symbols. By reflecting on the roots and the origins of the names of the characters such as Libby, Joanna, Sue and Paul can find the deep connection of these choices in the role of the types of the story. This approach even leads us to the third and more sublime layer of the film's theme, which is not possible in this review.

A thought-provoking open-end: The intelligent and brilliant open-end in the film after the romantic display of expressing love between Libby and Joanna from behind the bars of the school (the prison) raises this question for the audience: What will the end be like? Do you really want to know what happens to Libby? Will this remain a full-blown tragedy? The answer is up to you, it depends on what you will do to free up your Libby...

20 years ago during my studies I discovered the world of people with impaired hearing. And of course that of sign languages. Most people don't really know what a natural language is. Even less understand how critical for the development of a child's cognitive and social abilities is language learning and usage. Very few can fathom that sign languages (yes, plural) are as syntactically complex and expressively powerful as our audible ones. And as "legitimate" I'd add.

Just like hominids hundreds of millennia ago developed into languages speaking creatures and created languages (evolving simpler communication means) not by a decree but because they were useful, deaf communities all around the world created their languages pushed by the need to communicate. And just as every other natural language, sign languages transformed, forked into dialects or were forgotten.

Nothing of this - which is in a very approximate/summarized way the best of our knowledge on the topic today - can be found in "The Silent Child". Which is odd because it is clearly a piece of progressive propaganda in favour of sign language learning and against conservative social pressures/misconceptions which value a lot of stupid things more than a child's healthy development.

Superficiality is not an acceptable outcome even if caused by the need of fitting into a "short" format, nonetheless "The Silent Child" is a nice way of spending 20 minutes of your time; unfortunately it feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be. Could have been like Mary Poppins, but it's also a progressive commercial with manipulative music, dumb antagonists and tear-jerking drama, and it shows social relevant stats as well (just not the right ones) as if it was documentaristically exemplar of what usually happens.

Therefore, not that good and hopefully they won't make a full lenght out of it unless they do a more serious scientific research and decide which direction they want to take.

REVIEW - THE SILENT CHILD

We all walk around in our lives, going from place to place, rushing here there and everywhere, such is our busy lives these days, working, living, paying, buying ETC but one thing we all have in common is that we all were young and that has influenced who we are today.

When young we learn at school, skills which we will us throughout the rest of our lives to allow us to work, live, pay, buy ETC, but what if.............

This film follows the story of a young Deaf girl who is given the opportunity to learn Sign language but her parents who feel they are doing the 'right thing' send her to...........

After watching this short film, for a second put yourself in the shoes of a Deaf person or Blind person (See "In Darkness" review).

The task of asking for a sandwich at a store, ordering a coffee, asking directions, imagine not being able to hear the response.

The task of reading your bills, banking, filling up a cup with hot water, reading the menu at a restaurant, imagine not being able to see.

If there is one thing you do today, if you have children or know someone who does, encourage them to watch this short film and then start a discussion, raise their awareness, encourage them to learn finger spelling (easy to learn, takes about an hour).

A must see short film which all schools should show immediately.

Rating 10 out of 10

The mother was deaf in ways of her own, wasn't she? A touching story, beautiful cinematography, and a lovely pair of actors in the social worker and deaf child (Rachel Shenton and Maisie Sly), make this a good short, even if it is a little heavy-handed.

The Silent Child revolves around the efforts of a kindly, dedicated social worker (Rachel Shenton, who also wrote the film) attempting to teach sign language to a deaf four-year-old girl (Maisie Sly) as she prepares to start school.

Beautifully shot and scored, it's the strength of the writing and Shelton's deeply compassionate performance that really makes this one soar (Shenton's own father became deaf in his later years, so it's clearly a deeply personal project for her).

As a terrifying look at the isolating potential of deafness and a sad examination of negligent parenting - the child's mother (Rachel Fielding) staunchly opposes the sign language approach. It does a fantastic job getting the audience wholly invested in such a short time, cemented by a devastating final sequence that might leave you wiping away tears.

First, I was temptated to admire the impecable photography. Then , the storytelling. But it is a wise film. This is its main virtue. This is the motif to see it time by time. Because it is not exactly about a deaf child and her teacher , very dedicated, but about the essence of our near reality. Short, just a gem. Out of explanation but real useful in the most profound sense.

I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I've recently been suffering from one of those head colds that goes for your ears! It's meant that for the last few days I've been able to hear next to nothing. What that has meant is I've noticed just how awkward and difficult life can be when you cannot hear, or that sounds are muffled and indistinct. Imagine, then, how much more difficult life is for deaf four year old "Libby" (Maisie Sly). She lives with her family - a loving but busy bunch who don't really know where to start with the young girl. Then a social worker "Jo" (Rachel Shenton - who also wrote this) arrives on the scene determined to help bring the youngster out of her shell by teaching her sign language to complement her skilled lip-reading. There are early signs of success for "Libby" but heads start to butt with mother "Sue" (Rachel Fielding) beginning to almost seem to resent the relationship that's emerging between her daughter and her new friend. Some of that drama does come across as just a little contrived here, especially when the girl starts going to a school where she is clearly struggling, but the general and sensitive thrust of this drama does touch on issues of loneliness and isolation as well as guilt and lack of comprehension. Apparently 90% of kids born deaf have hearing parents and siblings so it's a tough learning curve for everyone and nobody ever likes asking for help! This suggests that, though difficult, this need never be a fear for anyone.

This film was not on my radar until it was suggested at random as something to watch, and I am so glad to have watched it now!

As parents, we all want our children to be 'normal' and in a world of distractions it is sometimes difficult to see what's right in front of you. But it is so so important to pay attention to what children need and to fight for those needs with everything we have.

Very powerful and moving. I hope it brings the issues covered into the spotlight so all deaf kids can be supported.

Sorry folks. The subject matter is extremely worthy and the sentiment laudable but it's a sickly sweet production that doesn't really have much narrative drive. Everyone in this film is categorised as good guys and bad guys and it lacks any shade or real subtlety.

This Oscar winning short wanted to highlight the frustrations of deaf children regarding family members not wanting to learn sign language and schools not adapting sufficiently to meet the needs of deaf children.

Libby is a four year old girl who is about to start school. Her world is watching television and some lip reading, she cannot talk much.

A social worker works with the child and helps her to communicate by teaching her sign language. Libby blossoms under her.

Her well off parents do not bother to follow this up by learning it herself.

When Libby starts school she returns to her silent world as nothing has been put in place for her.

This low budget short is fantastically filmed. The story is bittersweet. I did think the social worker was a little too good to be true, an element of Mary Poppins about her. She was more like a nanny than social worker and she never lost her cool with the parents.

The parents were horrid. The mother was always rushing about which made me think who looked after Libby before the social worker was assigned.

It is hinted that the father was not Libby's real dad, something not pursued further in the drama.