Amy (1981)

It’s always a treat to see a movie that’s not a comedy. Those have been all too rare for quite a while. Let’s get inspired!

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This is a very sad day. Okay, no it’s not. Director Vincent McEveety has put out some real trash. Out of a whopping twelve Disney films with him in the director’s chair, I think I’ve only actually enjoyed one, to the point where I couldn’t wait for his reign of terror to end. And now that we’ve reached his last Disney film, I’m looking back on a career that dates back to 1971 with something like nostalgia. And then I remember that career included Gus and Superdad so lol good riddance. From here on out this is a McEveety-free blog. Amy was originally designed as a TV movie, and I have a feeling that with a TV writer, Noreen Stone, and McEevety’s questionable direction, it’s going to feel like one. It was, however, strong enough that part of it was released as an educational short called Amy-On-The-Lips so at least we’ve got that going for us.

STORY

The movie begins in complete silence. Amy Medford drops a note and her wedding ring on a table and walks out of her house in Boston. It’s an incredible opening. In giving the audience nothing to focus on but the visuals, the impact of the action hits hard. For one shining moment, I thought we had something really special on our hands here. And then that moment ended. Amy’s carriage pulls up to the Parker School for the Deaf and Blind in the Appalachian mountains. The school matron tries to be cordial while showing Amy to her room, but Amy’s not really in the mood. She pulls a photo out of her bag, gazes at it for a long moment, then sets it at the bottom of a drawer, face down.

Lyle Ferguson, the superintendent, gives Amy a tour of the campus and a rundown of her new job as the speech teacher. She’s part of an experiment to try to teach six Deaf students to speak, but no one really believes that’s possible. It’s 1913, and disability advocacy leaves a lot to be desired. But the filmmakers did try by casting Lou Fant, a lifelong advocate of the Deaf/HOH community and the son of Deaf parents. That’s cool. We also learn that the blind and Deaf students tend to bully each other, all except Henry Watkins. Ferguson and Henry have a conversation in (real!) ASL, but Amy doesn’t understand sign language which seems like it might be kind of a dealbreaker if you’re trying to teach Deaf students but what do I know. We learn about the concept of name signs, and Henry and Ferguson take Amy to receive hers: A-on-the-lips.

At dinner, the other teachers, Helen Gibbs and Malvina Dodd make conversation with their new colleague. Amy explains that she’s never actually taught before, which combined with the fact that she can’t sign tells me she’s wildly unqualified for this job. Malvina agrees, though not without some unqualified snobbery about how Deaf people can’t speak. Ferguson breaks up the impending catfight, but they’re just going to have to learn to get along. Malvina’s charged with interpreting Amy’s first lecture, all about how they can mimic her speech by watching her lips and feeling the vibrations. Most students let her take their hands to demonstrate, but one of them doesn’t understand and freaks out, struggling and throwing things to get away. All Amy can do is beg him to stop which of course he can’t hear and Malvina just kinda stands there and lets it happen.

After the disastrous first lesson, Helen makes a bunch of excuses for Malvina’s behavior. If the Deaf kids learn to speak, then what use does the school have for the sign language teacher? But Helen believes in her. After all, none of her blind students knew Braille before Helen taught them, and none of the Deaf students knew ASL before Malvina taught them. Why should speech be any different? She introduces Amy to one of her blind students, a tiny adorable freckly ginger kid named Wesley. He firmly believes that on his fifth birthday, his eyes will open just like a kitten’s. No one knows quite what to say to that so they all just keep lying to him. His tragedy gives Amy the courage to look at the photo she’s been hiding: an old, faded picture of a young boy.

It seems Amy had a son that she may have lost. We’ll get more of that story in a minute, but it’s time to meet that son’s father. Elliott Medford hires a private investigator named Wanbuck to find his missing wife. During their conversation, we quickly learn why Amy doesn’t want to be found. He’s a real piece of work, painting a picture of Amy as a dependent invalid who’s physically incapable of doing anything for herself. It’s super gross. Even Wanbuck seems put off, but a job’s a job.

Later on, Amy peeks in on one of Helen’s Braille lessons and overhears a boy saying he’s not feeling well. She takes him to the nurse, but it quickly becomes apparent that he needs more help than she can give. Unfortunately, the school can’t afford an on-site doctor. In fact, they barely have enough money to feed the kids. So she has to send for one from the nearby village. While they wait, she tells the sick boy a story about a prince who was cursed to wear an eyepatch until he learned to be kind. When he became a better person, he was allowed to see again. This seems to me like a terrible story to tell a blind kid, but we’re supposed to see it as sweet because if it hasn’t become apparent yet the disabled students are props meant to make her look good.

Dr. Ben Corcoran arrives, and to Amy’s horror, he’s drunk out of his mind. He swaggers in, finishes her story for her, and kicks Amy out of the room explicitly because women only get in the way. Spoilers, this is our romantic lead. More spoilers, this is the romantic lead in a movie about a woman escaping an abusive husband. He does get marginally better but this is a terrible character introduction. Sometime later, Ben saunters out to declare that the boy just has a stomachache from eating too many green apples. Because sure. Henry and some of the other kids climb over his fancy motor car, curious, and he offers to give them a ride. Malvina hurries out, frantic, because the kids aren’t allowed off school grounds, but he declares that he doesn’t have to follow their rules because he doesn’t work there and zooms off with a car full of kids he doesn’t know.

For some reason, Malvina blames this on Amy for filling the kids’ heads with fantasies about learning to speak. All a disabled kid needs is coping mechanisms. They’ll never be able to join the real world. Okay, she’s supposed to be in the wrong but still um yikes. Later on, while cleaning the school, Helen unlocks Amy’s tragic backstory. She married the first rich man who asked, as was expected in 1913, but money does not equal happiness. He was cruel to her, subjecting her to ten years of mental and verbal abuse. So, even though it was technically illegal and she could be arrested for adultery, she walked out. It took incredible courage, and this part of the story actually is legitimately empowering. I just wish it wasn’t propped up by such flagrant ableism.

Well, that got heavy real quick. To lighten things up, Amy takes the next lesson outside to fly a kite with the kids. Ben is there too, for some reason, perfectly positioned to mansplain how to fly a kite and ‘help’ her get it into the air. She politely tells him to eff off because she’s working, but the second he’s gone the kite gets stuck in a tree. Because we really needed to enforce that she can’t do anything without a man’s help in this story about female empowerment. This movie tries so hard to say something profound and progressive while tripping over itself the entire way. It’s incredible. Anyway, Henry helps Amy get the kite down, then points to it. Then to his lips. And Amy understands. He’s asking how to say kite! Amy puts his hand on her cheek and demonstrates. And to her shock, he does it! It’s just one word, but it’s a start, and even better, it’s proof that it’s not impossible after all.

Despite his earlier reservations, a job’s a job, so Wanbuck goes to interview the Medford household’s staff. The maid hesitates but finally lets slip that the Medfords had a Deaf child who died. Elliott tried to cover it up, going as far as to hide it from Wanbuck. So the plot thickens. The way the writers lay out little breadcrumbs that make it easy to infer that Amy had a dead son, then a Deaf dead son, without ever saying it until a decent way through is actually impressive. This movie has many, many, many faults but the way it weaves its story is actually pretty great. It’s so weird.

Life moves along at Parker School. The kids get letters from home. Wearing eyepatches on your ears becomes a trend among the blind kids, thanks to Amy’s story. But things take a turn when the school board comes to inspect the school. After two months of expensive speech classes, only one kid has learned one word. Malvina can’t help butting in about how this whole thing is pointless, earning the chairman’s interest. The speech program is in trouble. And so is Amy’s sanctuary from her husband.

As if that weren’t bad enough, poor little Wesley comes down with a dangerous fever. Dr. Ben remains uncharacteristically grave when he gives his diagnosis: rheumatic fever. The staff try their best to keep Wesley’s spirits up as he reminds everyone he’s just a few days away from turning five when his eyes will open. It’s the “kiddie version” of “he was a day away from retirement” and they could not possibly lay it on thicker. But despite Ben’s best efforts, his fever keeps climbing. And then, he’s gone. Just like that. Ben realizes what happened and sends Amy out of the room to protect her from seeing, but the nurse’s face says it all. Amy rushes back to the infirmary and completely falls apart. It’s too much, after what she’s lost.

Ben tries to grab her to keep her from hurting herself, which should probably have been staged better. It looks like he’s violently shaking her, which considering Amy’s backstory, is not a great look. She struggles against him but collapses in his arms. Once the screaming stops, she sobs that she had a child who died in an asylum when he was barely older than Wesley. Her husband blamed her for his Deafness, heart defect, and death, berating her endlessly for birthing a broken child. So, he’s not just an abuser, he’s a eugenicist. Charming. Ben embraces her, letting her sob into his shoulder. And I know I should be feeling sympathy for her but I can’t get over how our lead is making a child’s death about herself. Cynical? Heartless? Maybe. But it’s just a symptom of this movie’s biggest flaw: holding disabled children’s lives up as props to make Amy look good.

Poor little Wesley is forgotten as quickly as he came. Cut to Ferguson’s office, where a poor farmer tries to convince him to let his Deaf son Mervin learn to speak. The only problem is that he’s nineteen, built like a Mac truck, and completely unsocialized. He’s also Barf from Midnight Madness, and the only Deaf student played by a hearing actor. Despite the safety concerns, Ferguson agrees to let Mervin learn to speak so he has a chance in life after his parents are gone. When he introduces Mervin to Amy’s class, they all laugh at this gigantic full-grown adult for studying with a bunch of pre-teens. Poor guy doesn’t understand what’s happening.

The mail comes, and this time it’s all good news. Henry’s mother is coming to visit for the first time ever! He brings the letter to Amy, frantically pointing between it and his lips to ask how to say ‘mother’. It takes a whole montage, but she’s happy to work with her star student as long as he needs. One sunny afternoon, Ben takes Amy, Henry, and all the kids for a nice picnic out on the meadow. The adults get to know each other better, and the kids frolic. But where’s Henry? Not to worry, they quickly find him watching a group of hearing boys playing football. He catches a rogue pass, but he can’t hear them inviting him to play. Amy ushers him away so he doesn’t see them laughing at him, but Ben gets the idea to teach the boys football. But only the boys, of course.

The ensuing montage NEVER ENDS but eventually, the kids learn to play and love football. They get so good Ferguson proposes a little pick-up game between the local hearing school and Parker’s Deaf players. The hearing superintendent remains skeptical, thinking it’s absurd to think able-bodied kids should ever be exposed to disabled kids. Better to treat them like pariahs. Perfect, no notes. Sportsball happens. It also never ends. Run throw jump run let’s go sportsball. The upshot is the Deaf kids win, the hearing kids learn a Very Valuable Lesson, and everyone has a lot of fun in the process. And they get their picture in the paper! … And Elliott sees the paper. With his wife’s face in the frame and her location in the article.

To celebrate their victory, Ben invites Amy to dinner. The two spend a romantic evening snuggling by the fire while smooth jazz plays on the Victrola. There’s a surprisingly sweet moment where Ben tells her how she reminds him of all his best memories, which is actually quite sweet. If that was the character we got from the beginning instead of a control freak drunkard, I might be a little more on board with this plot, but he blew his chance. She starts to leave because she’s still technically married, but he knows she feels the same way. And she’s safe now. She doesn’t have to run anymore. She pauses. Tries to leave. But when she makes up her mind, she turns back to Ben, and they share a kiss.

Later on and yes the transitions in this movie really are this bad, Malvina interrupts Amy’s lesson with news. Henry’s parents have arrived! He follows Malvina but freezes up in the hallway. This is too big a moment to mess up. After a moment’s hesitation, Malvina lets him touch her cheek to feel a reminder of how to say that one all-important word. With a deep breath, he walks in to face his parents. And we see that his mother is blind. He can’t sign to her, and she can’t speak to him. This is why he plays with blind kids, and why he wanted to learn to speak so badly. He kneels in front of her, takes her hand, and says, “Mother.” She bursts into tears, finally able to communicate with her son after fourteen years.

For one shining moment, it seemed like a Deaf child might actually get to be a character. Can’t let that happen, so we’d better pivot to make his triumph about Amy. Ferguson fetches her so she can witness the power of what she’s done. She’s done the impossible and taught a Deaf child to speak! Hooray! Let’s completely disregard all the hard work Henry put into this! Not that Amy learning to find her own self-worth after an abusive relationship isn’t a good and important story, it just comes at the expense of making Henry, or any of the disabled kids, three-dimensional characters in any way. This should be Henry’s moment. Not hers.

Either way, it’s not enough for the school board. They’re livid that Ferguson would spend school funds for the kids to play football instead of learning and threaten to cut the already insufficient funding even further. Ferguson argues that Deaf and blind kids need extracurriculars just as much as any other school, not to mention school supplies and medical care. He’s absolutely right of course, but the board reacts like treating disabled people like people is radical nonsense. That’s Amy’s cue to trot Henry out to perform and prove what a great teacher she is, and he responds to the chairman’s bellow that Deaf people can’t speak with a soft “yes, I can”. So Amy gets to keep her job.

Amy gets to keep her job. Hooray. The same kid who almost beat up Amy for touching him passes a cruel drawing of Mervin as a monkey around the class. It gets to Henry, who shoves the kid over to punish him for bullying poor Mervin, then holds the gentle giant’s hand to declare they’re friends now. D’awww. This is the kind of stuff I wish this movie had more of. Put some focus on the Deaf kids. Show me that they’re kids like any other with all the same schoolyard issues. It’s no accident that the best scenes are the ones where Henry is used as a character instead of a prop.

Every cut in this movie is incredibly abrupt, so now we’re watching Ben take Amy for a drive in the countryside. He declares that he wants her to learn to drive and her protests mean nothing. It goes poorly, and she smashes through a fence. As he fixes it, Ben declares that he has something to say and screams to the world that he loves her. She declares she loves him too even though this whole thing has been decidedly one-sided up to now. They play-chase through the trees and fall laughing to the grass for another kiss.

Just when things seem to be looking up, they come crashing down. The school receives a letter from the detective agency, asking if they’ve seen Elliott Medford’s wife. When confronted, she confesses that she left her husband, forged all of her credentials, and lied about pretty much everything, which makes it absolutely astonishing that she managed to teach anything at all. But I guess in this kind of movie your only real job qualification is to inspire. Whatever that means. She declares she’s not going back to being a possession, and she’s only sorry she got caught, which inspires the other teachers to want to protect her. Even Malvina. Seeing Henry’s mother completely changed her mind.

Transitions are hard so now it’s Christmas Eve. The blind kids sing Christmas carols while the Deaf kids decorate the tree. Amy goes to fetch another box of ornaments but breaks one and collapses crying to the floor. A blind kid hears her sobbing and comes in to cheer her up, which is the perfect good deed to allow him to remove the eyepatches from his ears. When she returns to the main room, Amy has to break up another fight. Seems Henry went postal when he caught the bully kid pelting Mervin with plush ornaments. Go off, kid. He sets an example for the others by letting Mervin put the star on top of the tree.

Amy and Henry pass the evening with a game of checkers. It seems the checkers set used to belong to her son, and since Henry’s the closest thing she has, it seems fitting that it goes to him. He thanks her with a big hug and goes to bed just as Ben saunters in dressed as Santa Claus. He even brought Amy a present: a poem he wrote, just for her. Back downstairs, the blind kids sing Christmas carols, and the Deaf kids have a surprise! They all come together to say “A very merry Christmas to everyone” to raucous applause. Looks like Henry’s not the only one who’s learned to say a few words, but this is the only time we ever see any Deaf child speak other than Henry. You’d think since teaching that one skill is the crux of Amy’s journey to self-worth we’d see her whole class learn something but this isn’t about them.

Ben returns in his Santa outfit with a big sack of toys for all the good little blind and Deaf girls and boys. Mervin has a gift for Henry, too. He whittled and painted a little wooden snake, just for him. Henry is touched, but it doesn’t last long. That same kid throws it on the ground and stomps on all of Mervin’s hard work. That’s the last straw. This time, Mervin decks him. He’s so big and strong that he knocks the kid unconscious and breaks his nose. Horrified at what he’s done, Mervin flees. And Henry chases after his friend.

To make things worse, the doorbell rings. It’s Elliott, asking Malvina if she knows Amy. Malvina tries to cover for her, but it doesn’t do much good when Amy shows up behind her seconds later. Husband and wife stare at each other, and Amy takes him to her office for a little privacy. The second they’re alone, he lays into her, telling her all about his anger and his humiliation, never once considering that she might have feelings and wants of her own. He even starts throwing her clothes into her suitcase, because he’s made up his mind and what he says goes. But Amy puts her foot down. She’s not going anywhere. She’s not his pet, she’s her own person, and even trying to sucker her in with the promise of another baby can’t change her mind.

But Henry and Mervin are gone. The missing kids are more important than Elliott’s fragile ego. As far as anyone can tell based on an enormous leap of logic, Mervin ran home, and Henry’s trying to stop him. Unfortunately, Mervin lives on the other side of the train tracks. And neither one can hear a train coming. Of course, a train tends to create pretty heavy vibrations that you can feel quite a distance away, but we can’t acknowledge that here. And someone who’s lived near a train all his life would know better than to walk directly on the tracks. But nah, we’re bound and determined to treat our Deaf characters like fragile babies who need Amy’s goodness to protect them, so it’s a race against the clock as the Bad Green Screen Mobile tries to beat the train. To the movie’s credit, Henry feels the vibrations (with his hand?) and gets off the tracks, but Mervin can’t apparently hear or feel or see the headlights bearing down on him. Henry tries to scream but it gets drowned out by the train whistle. And Mervin is gone.

The Bad Green Screen Mobile arrives too late. Ben covers Mervin’s body with a sheet. Amy breaks down as she realizes that learning to speak can only do so much for these children, and a third kid has died on her watch, and she’s a failure and she can’t help anyone and hey how about we don’t make this about you? Ben tries to comfort her, and the movie mercifully shifts focus back to the dead teenager. His parents ride up to collect their son’s body, and his mother bursts into tears not because her son is dead, but because he never learned to speak. Because… that’s how you learn not to get run over by a brightly lit extremely rattly train. To prove that Amy does have worth and Amy can teach Deaf kids because that’s the real issue here, Henry introduces himself as Mervin’s friend. Surprise, Melvin’s little sister Pearl is Deaf too, and her parents beg Amy to teach her so she, too, can learn to speak and not get run over by trains. I’m sorry, not to make light of a dead teenager, but come on, these two things are not remotely related.

Throughout all this drama, Elliott waits patiently at the school with Amy’s packed bags. As everyone returns, Elliott and Ben exchange glares. But to this movie’s credit, there’s no macho posturing. This is Amy’s fight, and Ben backs off without a word to let her fight it. Elliott demands Amy leave with him, but she stands her ground. And guys, if the whole movie was like this monologue, I would have liked it so much more. She does blame herself which isn’t cool, but the victim blaming is over quickly and she declares her self-worth. She doesn’t belong to him anymore. Henry verbally calls out to her, and she walks up the stairs with her arm around him, not even watching Elliott go. And that’s that.

This is an exceptionally bad movie that somehow manages to be very well-made. Nothing makes sense, nothing even resembles connective tissue, and the glurge is so thick you can choke on it. The Deaf and blind students are nothing but props meant to further Amy’s hopes and desires. Even Henry, who has the closest thing to interior life that any Deaf student gets, gets put on a pedestal and trotted out whenever Amy needs to feel like she’s accomplished something. We barely see the hard work he’s put in, and even the beautiful scene with his mother is reduced to “Amy! Look what you’ve accomplished!” Now, don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to read that this is a story of a woman fleeing an abusive marriage and finding her feet. But is there a reason that she and Henry couldn’t have been shown helping each other? These kinds of Very Special Lessons only patronize disabled characters to paint them as all brave and determined and inspirational. This one doesn’t even do that, it only infantilizes its disabled characters for the benefit of its able-bodied protagonist. It’s icky.

CHARACTERS

Amy Medford could and should have been one of the best female leads we’ve seen. But this script is trying way too hard. By focusing so hard on her accomplishing what we’re repeatedly told is impossible, we completely lose track of who she’s helping. The train scene takes it to an absolutely ludicrous extreme- what does Mervin being run over by a train have to do with learning to speak? You have to really screw up to make me lose sympathy for an abused wife escaping to find her place in the world but this movie managed to pull that off. I’m almost impressed. Jenny Agutter puts in a solid performance, but she’s much better in An American Werewolf In London later this same year. You might also recognize her as Councilwoman Hawley in The Avengers and Sister Julienne on Call the Midwife!

Dr. Ben Corcoran does not need to exist. I cannot stand romantic plot tumors, and this is a bad one. She’s just run away from an abusive husband and is learning to stand on her own two feet, but god forbid she doesn’t immediately find another man. Women simply cannot be allowed to be single. Not that victims of domestic violence can’t find a new, better love, but it feels really disingenuous to just throw her at the first adult male who looks at her. It’s not even like he’s a good guy, he’s introduced roaring drunk and telling her she’s in the way! Barry Newman’s barely acting at all, other than the atrocious fake Irish accent he keeps putting on for no discernable reason.

MUSIC

Vincent McEveety isn’t the only person leaving us. Robert F. Brunner has been composing music for the Disney studio since Toby Tyler in 1960, and like McEveety, he’ll be leaving us after this. The score here is a little sickeningly sentimental but I don’t know if that’s a function of the score or just the way the movie is. He uses flute and solo piano to good effect, at least, and considering his other scores included Gus and The Boatniks, I feel comfortable calling this one of his better works.

So Many Ways immediately undercuts the strong opening with an overdose of schmaltz. After she was the best thing by far about the Devil and Max Devlin, it’s almost embarrassing that they did Julie Budd this dirty. It’s an incredibly dull ballad all about how wonderful Amy is and how much her “glow” means to everyone around her. And just like that, I knew the movie would not live up to that cold open. And it did not, in fact.

ARTISTRY

You can tell this was a made-for-TV movie. It looks cheap, with limited camera movement and washed-out colors. There’s an almost sepia tone over the whole movie that I think was meant to convey nostalgia, but it doesn’t quite get there. It just makes everything feel muted and dull so that even the most emotional moments fall flat.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This movie is baffling. It’s a story that should be powerful told completely incompetently then delivered with hints of solid filmmaking hidden beneath some really ugly visuals. And if that sounds like it’s all completely contradictory, it’s indicative of what a total mess this movie is. And that’s before you get into the flagrant ableism. Miracle Worker-style movies don’t exist for disability advocacy, they exist to make able-bodied people feel good about themselves at the expense of people who are just trying to live their lives. I really wanted to root for Amy’s journey to self-worth, but I just couldn’t when she’s completely erasing her students’ agency the entire movie. The train scene broke me.

Favorite scene: Henry speaking to his mother for the first time. Amy undermines it almost immediately, but the beginning of the scene is a genuinely beautiful moment.

Final rating: 4/10. There are enough well-written, well-acted moments strung together that it’s not completely terrible, but it’s mostly terrible.