Hear and Now

USA 2006 / 84min.
Director Irene Taylor Brodsky / Producer Irene Taylor Brodsky, Eve Epstein, Sara Bernstein

At 65 years, Paul and Sally Taylor wanted to listen to their first symphonies, close their eyes and follow a conversation, weep in time to a schmaltzy movie and talk on the phone.

Deaf since birth, the Taylors met at a school for the deaf, fell in love, married, and developed strong identities in the deaf community and raised three hearing children.

“So why am I joining the hearing world?” Sally has asked herself. “Being deaf and not hearing anything is like taking a shower with lukewarm water! You can feel the water pelting on you, and you’re getting wet, but you don’t get the sensation that the warmth of hot water provides.”

Filmmaker daughter Irene Taylor Brodsky tells a deeply personal story about her parents’ complex decision to leave their world of silence to get cochlear implants – the only restorative surgery of its kind. How will this transform them, their relationship with each other, their children and the deaf world they are leaving behind? Will they still be deaf, or hearing, or something in between?

A story of two people gifted their fifth sense only late in their lives, the question is, what will they make of it? And what might they gain — or lose — forever?

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