SOUND AND FURY

If you could cure an ailment ? especially a child's ? why wouldn't you? But if that ailment is deafness, reversible now by advanced electronic inner-ear implants, are you curing a malady or contributing to the destruction of a human culture? Easy answers do not come through loud and clear in this nonfiction clash of the Artinians, a Long Island family afflicted with congenital deafness and conflicted by the latest medical advances. Peter and Nina Artinian consider a cochlear implant for their young daughter Heather, but Peter's mind seems already made up. A successful computer programmer, he's “happy to be deaf,” proudly dwelling with his wife and deaf friends in a reality delineated by silence and American Sign Language. The operation would thrust their daughter away from them and into the realm of the “hearing world,” obsoleting ASL and the appreciation of “deaf culture.” For Peter's brother and his wife, meanwhile, it's no question. Two hearing parents of a deaf baby, they are determined to give their boy the natural advantage of all five senses ? and deplore that Peter is depriving his daughter, possibly even his wife, of the opportunity to perceive a universe of sound. In this passionate and compelling documentary, who will be heard above the cacophony? Who will be hearing at all when it is over?