Documentary Movie Reviews

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Sound and Fury 6 Years Later (2006)

Rate: 7
Viewed: 10/16

SoundFury
10/16: Following up the story of Heather Artinian and her cousin (who didn't appear in the original) after what happened in 2000, Sound and Fury 6 Years Later feels incomplete, biased, and one-sided.

I feel torn by the statements made by the grandparents that Heather needed to be cochlear implanted so she could meet the hearing world on its terms. However, it's what Heather wanted all along.

For every success story of Heather Artinian, there are many failures. Being cochlear implanted is neither simple as it sounds nor the panacea to deafness. These kids have so many underlying problems that impact their language acquisition.

It's not their fault or due to cochlear implants; learning a spoken language in the absence of sound is a difficult task. The problems can be easily compounded by additional disabilities; low IQ; lack of parental support; delayed language learning, identification, and/or amplification; lack of support from school, etc. Being able to hear clearly for the first time doesn't automatically make up for these deficits; in short, there's still a long journey to go, and it entails a lot of hard work.

To succeed in the hearing world, the deaf individual has to be persistent in making through. Parental support goes a long way, and it remains the single most important component of success for a deaf child. The harsh reality is that not many deaf children are like Heather and only few have supportive parents like hers.

I wasn't concerned about Heather's decision to be a "hearing" person which is evidence enough that the deaf culture is slowly fading away due to rapid advances in cochlear implant technology. Rather, I was interested to see if that's what she wanted all along. It appears to be so, and that's that. There's no argument from me, and I have no reason to be negative about it.

All in all, Sound and Fury 6 Years Later is a disappointing follow-up to the original documentary and paints an inaccurate picture about cochlear implants.