The Miracle Worker Critique Paper

The Miracle Worker is a biographical film that features the life of Helen Keller. The
movie presents the life and struggles of Helen being a deaf blind mute person and how Annie
Sullivan, her teacher, helped her overcome it. The first movie directed by Arthur Penn and
starred by Anne Bancroft as Sullivan and Patty Duke as Keller was released in 1962 after a 1959
Broadway production by William Gibson. Other versions of this film were also released
subsequently.

In The Miracle Worker, Helen Keller was left deaf blind and mute due to scarlet
fever or meningitis which she experienced when she was 19 months old. Her family can’t deal
with her attitude because the child has never been disciplined. She gets what she wants and if she
does not succeed, she would throw up tantrums. And so her family contacted the Perkins Institute
for the Blind in Boston which eventually led them to Annie. Annie has herself been
institutionalized, so she sympathizes with the urgency Kate, Helen’s mother, feels about Helen.
She began teaching Helen to finger-spell several words and proper manners with patience and
determination. . Annie noticed that Helen’s pupil understands things only as a memorization
game and she does not understand that the sequences of letters have meaning. Sullivan tries
various approaches, and after one chaotic meal, Sullivan grabs Helen and forces her to the pump,
to fill the pitcher of water she knocked over. As Helen feels the water rush over one hand,
Sullivan finger-spells "water" into the other. Suddenly, Helen understands. She felt the water
flowing over her hand, and felt Annie spelling the word into her palm, and says, “Wah. Wah.”
She runs all over, asking for the names of everything. It's clear that Annie succeeded in patiently
teaching Helen and has opened the world to her.

Arthur Penn's exceptional screen version of William Gibson's play about the early life of
Helen Keller and of how a great dedicated teacher, Annie Sullivan, forced her to be educated is a
powerful and well-acted film. Penn’s style was so powerful and creative in the sense that such
black and white film brought out colorful perspectives upon watching it. The black and white
camerawork and editing, by people who, strangely, had very limited careers, is superb. The
conflict, which is highlighted in the staged one dining-room fight, wherein Annie tries to impose
some rudimentary table manners on the wild child, showcased an impeccable acting. Portraying
a role without speaking is not an easy thing yet the actors portrayed the role well. The over-all
flow was purely art. It would take you through a full range of emotion and thoughts. The film
could have ended like a melodrama, but Penn, being so creative, kept his style and the result is
enormously moving without being too over sentimental.

The Miracle Worker is a great film that is highly-recommended for watching. The whole
content of the movie, including the actors and especially the story was impressively beautiful and
inspiring. It tells us never to lose hope in everything we love to do and for the people we love.
Truly, The Miracle Worker is a miracle.

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