The Miracle Worker (2000 film)

The Miracle Worker is a 2000 American

Plot

In the 1880s,

Plagued with vision problems of her own and orphaned at a young age, Anne has the right mix of steeliness, empathy and patience to turn her young student's behavior around and teach her language. Anne's job as Helen's teacher is made more difficult by Helen's imperious plantation-owner father, Captain Arthur, and her overly soft-hearted mother, Kate, when they doubt her authority and challenge her methods. Anne's goal is to not just teach Helen to behave but to give her gift of communication. Using sign language and signing the letters to spell words in Helen's open palm, Annie makes large strides toward improving Helen's behavior.

After two weeks of living alone with Helen in a small house on the Keller family plantation, Annie is still unable to reach a breakthrough with Helen when her mandated time deadline is reached. During Helen's homecoming dinner, she begins to revert to her old ways of misbehavior. Anne takes Helen outside to the pump to refill a water pitcher she spilled during one of her tantrums, and the long-awaited breakthrough is made. Helen makes the connection that the words Anne has been spelling in her open palm are in reality the communicative representation of those things in the physical world around her. The word "water" is the wet fluid coming out of the water pump. With this connection the doorway for communication is opened to Helen, and she can now survive and thrive in the world through the eyes and ears of others.

Cast

• Alison Elliott as Anne Sullivan
• Hallie Eisenberg as Helen Keller (as Hallie Kate Eisenberg)
• Lucas Black as James Keller
• Kate Greenhouse as Kate Keller
• David Strathairn as Captain Keller
• Damir Andrei as Dr. Anagnos
• Stewart Arnott as Farm Boss
• Kevin Duhaney
  as Percy
• Neville Edwards as Henry
• Patricia Gage as Aunt Ev
• Eugene Lipinski as Proctor
• Twila Provencher as Young Annie
• Jackie Richardson as Viney

See also

• The Miracle Worker (1962 film)
• The Miracle Worker (1979 film)
• Black (2005 film)
• List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing

References

External links

• The Miracle Worker at
  IMDb
• The Miracle Worker at AllMovie
• The Miracle Worker at the TCM Movie Database