Nell

Nell

My first reaction to the movie “Nell” after having seen it was that it brought up some very interesting problematics. It is very clear in this movie how difficult it is to be different, how difficult it is to live after another set of norms than the people surrounding you. And especially how difficult it is being the only one speaking ones language, not only the spoken language but also the body language.

Already at the first meeting with Nell we get confronted with a general point of view – if it does not speak a known language or does not behave a certain way that we know, it simply cannot be a sain human being. The officer asks what that thing inside is. It was easy to see it was a human young woman. But because she behaved so different and used so different sounds that he is used to, he did not see her as a “normal” human being. And of course she was not a “normal” woman. At least not the way we understand the word normal. In her own tiny society with her mother and her sister she was perfectly normal. She just has a different set of norms and different sounds system. The police officer again speaks of her as a creature even after being curtain that they are dealing with a woman who just grew up on very different terms than what is considered “normal” in their part of the world.

The imidate diagnose for Nell is that she is Mentally retarded – she uses her mouth in ways that has been seen with mentally sick people and she seems to be speaking to herself or to have an imaginary friend. We, as viewers know, that she is in fact speaking to her dead sister with whom she created and spoke the language she now speaks. This language is as good as any. It has its roots in English but evolved since her mother had a disorder in her face making her speak differently. Having never heard standard English the two girls created another variety of English that is so different to the one heard in America that one simply could not understand her before having