Word: mutes
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...real jewel of the film is Samantha Morton as Hattie, a mute laundress who tries to tries to take up Emmet as a lover. Looking like she just stepped out of a silent film, Morton gives a performance that, without a single line of actual dialogue, matches Penns in intensity and sheer entertainment value. Her expressive eyes and Groucho Marx facial expressions make her the perfect foil for Emmets self-absorbed rambling. Its so clear that the two are right for each other that when Emmet totally fails to realize the value of Hatties unconditional love, we realize just...
...Mark, may also contain scraps of genuine memory, but lacking complete originals, we have only the shakiest grounds for assessing their reliability. The disappointing fact seems to be that most of the surviving New Testament Apocrypha arose in legitimate attempts to comprehend realities about which the canonical Gospels are mute, and any dogged attempt to read them is apt to leave the reader with one prime reaction--those 2nd and 3rd century Christian editors who decided on the final contents of the New Testament were, above all else, superb literary critics...
Morton knows a great part when she sees one. The fact that Sweet and Lowdown's Hattie utters not a single word--the character is mute--was far from a deterrent for the ordinarily motor-mouthed Morton, who delivers a magnetically expressive performance opposite Sean Penn. "Hattie's so full of stuff: How can I convey all that she's thinking?" she says. "Learning lines is the easiest thing in the world. This was the hardest part I've ever played...
Penn does bold justice to this lowdown giant. But Samantha Morton, as Emmet's "mute orphan half-wit" of a girlfriend, is the sweet revelation. Rarely has a performer mined such complex and potent emotion from such simple materials: a smile, a shrug, an attentive winsomeness. She hardly nods or shakes her head in response to a question, yet always conveys the meaning and feeling. In an age of actors' tics and rantings, such austere clarity is worth cherishing. The interpretive magic that Emmet Ray achieves with six strings, Morton conjures with none...
Indonesia is still in a very delicate state of recovery. It has passed its first democratic test, but it faces enormous economic problems, and its sense of self is fragmented at best. The eccentric pairing of the blind cleric and the mute princess will not enjoy a long honeymoon...