MARLEE MATLIN NOT ALONE ANYMORE (Sundance FF 2025) – Review by Leslie Combemale
There are so few Deaf directors working in Hollywood, it’s a joy to encounter a film helmed by one. Made for the PBS series American Masters, director Shoshannah Stern makes the perspective of the documentary very clear. She shifts back and forth between spoken word used with hearing subjects, and subtitles and no oral interpretation with Deaf subjects as well as in scenes where she’s interviewing Marlee Matlin. That alone requires a shift in hearing viewers that creates empathy and understanding some might not have before watching the film. And Not Alone Anymore is a necessary and valuable film, because it tells the story of a groundbreaking trailblazer who has shifted American culture permanently and in dramatic ways.
Not only was Matlin the first Deaf performer to win an Academy Award, she was also instrumental in getting closed captioning adopted across the screen industries. The laws that required captioning exist in large part because of Marlee Matlin. The shift in how Deaf actors are hired, and the roles they get on both the small and big screen, has happened because of Marlee Matlin. The way society views Deaf people, in terms of education and communication, has been permanently changed, as has accessibility in general, because of her.
There are a lot of people interviewed in the documentary, sharing their experiences as part of the Deaf community or as part of Matlin’s life and career. Just when you think Henry Winkler couldn’t be more lovable, he shows up as someone who was a father figure to Matlin from the time she was a teenager. They’ve been close nearly her whole life, to the extent that she lived with him and his family for 2 years, and got married in his back yard. The stories about them are great, as are insights from Matlin’s longtime interpreter Jack Jason. He was not only present for most of her career’s high points, he was also direct witness to the physical abuse she suffered during her tumultuous relationship with Bill Hurt. Watch, and try not to cringe, when Stern shows footage of Matlin’s Oscar acceptance, after a bit of context.
Stern proves a great interviewer, with scenes in which she’s one on one with Matlin proving particularly intimate. They sit together, face to face, in comfy clothes and their socks, signing a mile a minute. They show each other sympathy as they share stories, and Matlin relates her darker experiences, like her early struggle with addiction. She believes those addictions were a result of the isolation and language deprivation she experienced as a child, something many Deaf folks experience with their hearing family and friends.
Stern is also an actor, and she, like so many Deaf female actors, have been in productions of Children of a Lesser God as rights of passage. Still, the play, and by extension, the movie, don’t represent the Deaf community well at all. Children of a Lesser God is about the man who supposedly loves a Deaf girl making her speak. Why does her not speaking make her less than? “It was for the hearing world, not for us.” one interviewee says, and as actor Lauren Ridloff, who was Tony-nominated for her performance in the revival says, “I could never fall for someone who didn’t believe I had a right to take up space in the world.”
The documentary continues through to the present day, including Matlin’s work in CODA, the Oscar winning film that far better exemplifies the Deaf community. CODA also led to an Oscar win for costar Troy Kotsur, decades after Matlin’s win in 1986. Over her career, she has been actor, producer, activist, and autobiography author, and in 2023, she added director to her CV by helming an episode of the TV show Accused.
As fellow actor, writer, woman in film, and member of the Deaf community, Stern has a point of view that can uniquely present Matlin’s story, which becomes clear in how the documentary unfolds, and what it covers. It’s not hero worship, it’s a sensitive portrait of someone who is a strong, talented woman with opinion, and an inarguably important figure in American culture. Both hearing and Deaf audiences will be moved by her story.
4 1/2 out of 5 stars.
