User Reviews

A heartfelt, warmly produced non-fiction film about a family and how deafness brought the generations closer. It follows an 11 year old boy who lost his hearing early in life, following after his grandparents who were both born deaf. It shows us how they were the better for it, being a gift in ways the hearing community could not understand. This boy's mom filmed her parents and son, narrating what they had accomplished in their lives and how they helped each other through the struggles and joy of life.

Over the film's story it is impossible not to be pulled into what they are feeling: the love, humor, and fullfillment of what life can bring through the "defect" of being deaf. He learns to play the piano (focuses on the 1st movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata") ultimately best when he turns off the cochlear implants that were implanted when he was 5, and hears his own music, in a way, just as Beethovan did.

Although it clearly shows the difference that technology has made between the generations, the story also shows how his grandparents achieved greatness and love in their lives before the internet and hearing aids. A deep, touching story generously shared with us.

We really wanted to like this documentary. But we did not.

The narrative lines, said and implicit, do not hold together: the story of Jonas and his decision to learn to play the Moonlight sonata; the weak parallel with Beethoven deafness in his last years; the watercolor animations, that are thrown here and there to add emotional suggestion but that really do not deliver that; the story of the declining cognitive impairment of the grandfather.

The main thread, the story of Jonas, did not seem any remarkable to us - beyond the amazing technological and medical wonder that are cochlear implants, now available for a sizeable part of deafness conditions. Jonas got the implants at a very young age, and this, together with the boy strong character and lots of family love and support, made him a normally functioning 11 year old boy. The long and boring scenes where the teacher gives him piano private lessons, are quite unremarkable and uninteresting (which is great news to us and to him: he's just a normal, sometimes lazy, sometimes tired, most of the times very opinionated young man).

The only interesting story of the documentary seemed to us the earlier life of Jonas' grandparents, whose deafness experience from childhood throughout their adult life, parenthood and working life was instead remarkable and inspiring. The implants became available to them only to an older age.

However since the materials from Jonas's tale were so insufficient for anything longer than a short movie, the director carries us into having to observe and feel the pain of grandpa's declining cognitive capability. The painful filmed moments of him failing, repeatedly, his driving tests and, most cynically, a live recording of when the director (his daughter) informs him that she no longer trusts him driving her kids in his car - followed by the overwhelming pain and disorientation of the two elderly grandparents - were gratuitous, unjustified in the flow of the story, and were received by our watching group as a strike by the author to move our sentimental chords that the rest of the movie had left untouched. Yes, we were moved. One of us even cried thinking about her elderly loved ones. But this was not a theme were emotions were expected and were due in this documentary.