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NWAnews.com :: Northwest Arkansas' News Source
Imagine living your life deaf since birth.
Imagine meeting and falling in love with your spouse, who is also deaf, and living decades of happy, productive lives in silence.
Imagine finally having the chance to hear. Would you do it ? How would it change you and your relationship ? That’s the basis for a deeply personal documentary today on HBO.
Hear and Now debuts at 7 p.m. and tells the tale of Paul and Sally Taylor, a married couple who undergo risky cochlearimplant surgery.
The intimate account of their journey comes from their daughter, Irene Taylor Brodsky. The film won an Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Why is the tale so moving ? The Taylors had spent their entire lives in silence. It was a comfortable life, a rich life, “filled with jobs, hobbies, passions and the support of a devoted four-generation family, including their own three hearing children.” To be able to hear would be a profoundly life-altering experience.
Paul and Sally had both been pioneers in the deaf community. Sally was a teacher and secretary and used her skill at lipreading to aid law enforcement investigations.
Paul is an engineer and retired professor who helped develop the TTY, or text telephone, a telecommunication device for the hearing-impaired.
When they were 65, Paul and Sally announced they were going to get cochlear implants. The new technology could restore their hearing, but their announcement was met with mixed feelings by Irene.
“After this surgery, who will they be ?” Irene asks in the special. “Will they still be deaf people, or hearing people, or will they be something in between ? What if the implant doesn’t work ? What if one of them can hear and the other one can’t ?” At its heart, the film is a love story about two people who found each other and grew together and made a life together and decided to take one final leap of faith together. It was a leap into the great unknown.
Irene brings her parents ’ younger years to life in the film. She shows how they learned to communicate in a special school, survived the stigma of being so different in a mainstream high school and overcame the challenges of being deaf parents of hearing children.
A cochlear operation takes three hours and places a tiny computer into a recess carved out of the skull. Silicone transmitters are threaded into the cochlea like so many microphone cables.
A month after the operations, the couple visit their audiologist to have the implants turned on and to learn if they can hear.
The film then explores the psychological aspects of adapting to a restored sense of hearing and lets viewers marvel at how subjective and delightful something so basic as hearing can be.
For example, Sally delights in the sound of water flowing over rocks and waves. She loves the sound of a light switch flipping on and off and the flushing of a toilet.
Still, the surgery is not perfect and the documentary covers the resulting highs and lows. The final question to be answered for Paul and Sally: Is it better to stay in their comfortable, familiar, silent world or face the challenges and frustrations of a new one filled with sound ?
Hear and Now will encore on HBO several times, including 6: 30 p.m. Sunday; 8: 30 a.m. and 11 p.m. May 15; 9: 15 p.m. May 19; and 5: 30 p.m. May 27.
Imagine living your life deaf since birth.
Imagine meeting and falling in love with your spouse, who is also deaf, and living decades of happy, productive lives in silence.
Imagine finally having the chance to hear. Would you do it ? How would it change you and your relationship ? That’s the basis for a deeply personal documentary today on HBO.
Hear and Now debuts at 7 p.m. and tells the tale of Paul and Sally Taylor, a married couple who undergo risky cochlearimplant surgery.
The intimate account of their journey comes from their daughter, Irene Taylor Brodsky. The film won an Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Why is the tale so moving ? The Taylors had spent their entire lives in silence. It was a comfortable life, a rich life, “filled with jobs, hobbies, passions and the support of a devoted four-generation family, including their own three hearing children.” To be able to hear would be a profoundly life-altering experience.
Paul and Sally had both been pioneers in the deaf community. Sally was a teacher and secretary and used her skill at lipreading to aid law enforcement investigations.
Paul is an engineer and retired professor who helped develop the TTY, or text telephone, a telecommunication device for the hearing-impaired.
When they were 65, Paul and Sally announced they were going to get cochlear implants. The new technology could restore their hearing, but their announcement was met with mixed feelings by Irene.
“After this surgery, who will they be ?” Irene asks in the special. “Will they still be deaf people, or hearing people, or will they be something in between ? What if the implant doesn’t work ? What if one of them can hear and the other one can’t ?” At its heart, the film is a love story about two people who found each other and grew together and made a life together and decided to take one final leap of faith together. It was a leap into the great unknown.
Irene brings her parents ’ younger years to life in the film. She shows how they learned to communicate in a special school, survived the stigma of being so different in a mainstream high school and overcame the challenges of being deaf parents of hearing children.
A cochlear operation takes three hours and places a tiny computer into a recess carved out of the skull. Silicone transmitters are threaded into the cochlea like so many microphone cables.
A month after the operations, the couple visit their audiologist to have the implants turned on and to learn if they can hear.
The film then explores the psychological aspects of adapting to a restored sense of hearing and lets viewers marvel at how subjective and delightful something so basic as hearing can be.
For example, Sally delights in the sound of water flowing over rocks and waves. She loves the sound of a light switch flipping on and off and the flushing of a toilet.
Still, the surgery is not perfect and the documentary covers the resulting highs and lows. The final question to be answered for Paul and Sally: Is it better to stay in their comfortable, familiar, silent world or face the challenges and frustrations of a new one filled with sound ?
Hear and Now will encore on HBO several times, including 6: 30 p.m. Sunday; 8: 30 a.m. and 11 p.m. May 15; 9: 15 p.m. May 19; and 5: 30 p.m. May 27.