Language Arts – Important Lesson on Life
Director: Cornelia Duryee
Writer: Cornelia Duryee (Screenplay) Stephanie Kallos (Novel)
Starring: Ashley Zukerman, Sarah Shahi, Elliott Smith, Lincoln Lambert, Erin Cummings, Mariana Klaveno, Jane Ryan
Plot: Charles, a withdrawn high school English teacher, and his student Romy start documenting collaborations between autistic youth and senior dementia patients, causing Charles to tailspin into his past and confront the errors of his youth.
Runtime: 2 Hours 7 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Language Arts starts when one of Charles Marlow’s (Zukerman) students looks to do a project documenting collaboration between autistic youth and senior dementia, which will see Charles looking into his past, with his own son Cody.
Charles looks at how he handled raising his son with his partner Allison (Shahi) and the difficulties they went through before finding a solution that worked best, even though it stretched their own relationship in the process.
Thoughts on Language Arts
Thoughts – Language Arts is a drama that will span over three different times in Charles life, one as a schoolboy where he came into contact with his first autistic person in life, with a class mate. The second era of time is with his own marriage with an autistic son and the final one sees him as a teacher working with a student working on the idea there could be a connection between autism and dementia. This is a story that is looking to address the real-world situation that people are going to have learning disabilities, but ill learn, once you listen to their needs as a friend, while also highlight the extra difficulties parents overcome in everyday life. The journey Charles goes through is life changing, one that is filled with inspiration, heartbreak and redemption life can put you through. This does feel like certain time jumps can become difficult to keep on top of everything, with the father and teacher periods being too similar, while missing the big change that happened in the middle. The performances in the film are strong, with a large cast including lead Ashley Zukerman, Sarah Shahi and Pamela Reed, which will see everyone perform well throughout the film.
Final Thoughts –Language Arts is a drama that shows us the emotional rollercoaster of Charles life is.