How Sweet the Sound?

In the 1940s, the great American novelist and composer Paul Bowles remarked that, all in all, the modern world was so rife with irritating noises that the thought of losing one's hearing was not entirely without appeal.

But Irene Taylor Brodsky prefaces "Hear and Now," her superb new documentary about the decision of her deaf parents, Paul and Sally Taylor, to undergo cochlear implant surgery at age 65, with a well-known epigraph from Helen Keller to the effect that being deaf is worse than being blind, because deafness is more isolating.

That the deaf suffer from a species of loneliness unknown to the rest of us is amply demonstrated in the powerful emotions that spill forth once Ms. Brodsky's extraordinarily lovable and charming parents begin to experience the world of sound for the first time — an experience that also causes them to relive the trauma of having, in some essential way, lived apart from the mass of humanity their entire lives.

Yet as this documentary, which makes its premiere Thursday at 8 p.m. on HBO, demonstrates, the sentiment expressed by Bowles is at least as apposite as Keller's. What lends "Hear and Now" an underlying resonance is that for more and more people, hearing has become the most burdensome of the senses. One only has to consider the number of ear plugs, sound-canceling devices, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills being purchased to attest to that. Indeed, it's hard to suppress a twinge of envy when, several months after his surgery, Ms. Brodsky's father decides to enhance the pleasures of a late afternoon cocktail by disconnecting his revolutionary hearing aid (the greatest single innovation in 21st-century medicine, a doctor calls it) and revisiting the silence that has been his lifelong companion.

Clocking in at less than 90 minutes, "Hear and Now" operates on several levels, all successful. It is an exploration of the world of sound and of its absence. (There is engrossing historical footage from training films created by the Central Institute for the Deaf, the school where Paul and Sally met as children, in which teachers instruct students in "The Oral Method" of learning how to speak and pronounce English.) It is a love story about two people who are as near to being soul mates as one can imagine. It is also an increasingly tense account of whether the miracles of modern medicine will disrupt a seemingly perfect marriage. The only facet of the story that undercuts the narrative tension is that Paul and Sally appear so ideally matched that it's hard to conceive of a serious fissure in their mutual devotion.

At one point, Ms. Brodsky, who narrates, remarks that as a girl, she sometimes suspected her parents of being CIA agents who pretended to be deaf as cover. (Her mother, an especially skilled long-distance lip-reader, was occasionally hired by the police for surveillance purposes.) It's a childish fantasy, but an understandable one. Footage from silent home movies shows the young Sally to have been a cheeky, flirtatious beauty (despite being deaf, she was the gossip editor of her high-school newspaper), while Paul was an imperturbably calm and handsome professor. Together, they managed to produce three hearing children and raise a family without apparent strain. Watching the home movies of them goofing around by the swimming pool, or of Dad climbing into his big American car to drive off to work, switching on an engine he couldn't hear, amounts to a weird parody of generic 1950s nuclear-family happiness. Yet the happiness seems authentic, despite the fact that the parents lived in a world of silence while their children did not.

The pain, though, was often there, and in an instant it could pass from parent to child. There is a startling moment in one of the home movies, where Mrs. Taylor is singing and then breaks off, sheepishly realizing that the child listening has suddenly noticed that her mother's voice and intonation are completely abnormal. (Though most of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor's speech is comprehensible, there are subtitles to help out.)

The majority of this lucidly filmed, uncluttered documentary takes place in the present as Paul and Sally, still attractive but grown thicker and white-haired, prepare for their operations and, afterward, come to terms with the pros and cons of sound. As Ms. Brodsky notes, the doctors, unthinkingly embracing the latest medical breakthrough, do not even demand a psychological test to determine the wisdom of bringing the gift of hearing to people who have managed for 65 years without it. The science is ingenious, but the people administering it seem rather less so.

"I was unnerved by their choice," Ms. Brodsky says of her parents. "Who will they be? What if one of them can hear and the other can't? Mom and dad are just really good at being deaf people. So why hear now?"

The answer is that, with the possibility within their grasp, her parents are simply too curious to pass up the opportunity. I won't spoil the experience of watching this wonderful film by divulging exactly how it ends, but it will come as no surprise that the experiment has decidedly mixed results. Yes, the sound of the wind in the trees can be delightful, but what of a supermarket manager shouting orders over a P.A. system? Is it preferable to hear a dog barking, or merely to be able to see that it's doing so?

The bottom line is that cochlear implants are better suited to the very young than to the old, whose brains are less adaptable. Yet it's hard to feel sorry for Paul and Sally despite the trauma they go through as they bravely enter a new and noisy world. Though the implants themselves are permanent, the battery-operated controls can be disconnected at will. In a world of car-alarms and cell-phone addicts, who wouldn't want silence as an option?

bbernhard@nysun.com