Film Reflective Journal — Hear Me: Our Summer (2024)
This film is really good. I always like watching something fresh, especially the film making me to explore a new side of this world which I’ve never encountered before.
This film is about a CODA girl named Yeorum who needed to always take care of younger sister who was deaf named Gaeul. She was a swimmer and prepared herself to go her for Olympic. The last main character was Yeongjun — he was a fresh graduate who was looking for job but he was working with his family first because he did not know what he wanted to do yet as he was not good at anything. Yeorum was also like this as well. Both of them did not know what to do with their life. For Yeorum, she was only thinking of her younger sister. For Yeongjun, he was having fun around while exploring himself. I like dynamics between these 3 characters.
I liked the way this film portrayed how hard it would be to live as a deaf person who live as people with disabilities (PWD). We could also perceive PWD’s point of view, CODA’s point of view and normal people’s point of view through this film.
For the deaf, they did not want to be anyone’s burden and did not want to receive anyone’s pity. They just wanted to live like other people did. Besides, they didn’t have a difficult time that much; thus, they didn’t want anyone’s pity here. They rarely needed anyone’s help because they might also feel burden to other people. One of the things which surprised me was that some people discriminated PWD like aliens. For instance, a group of old ladies behaved like Karen and commanded the coach to clean the swimming pool as if they were not normal like them. They said something really terrible. It was really ridiculous when that old lady parked a car in PWD’s lot. Such a really disgusting.
For CODA like Yeorum, she always took care of her family. Even if she did that out because of love, it seemed like it made everyone in her family felt burden. Both of her parents and her younger sister wanted her to live her own life. Not to take care of other people, but to think about her life. Live as Yeorum not as someone’s older sister or a daughter of her parents. I was really touched by this.
For normal people like Yeongjun, I think he was really kind like his father. He had a kind heart. He did not mind at all to date a deaf person (both of Yeongjun and Yeorum misunderstood each other that another person was blind). I think he was not considerate enough when he invited them to go to pub or hang out together. He had never known how it felt like when the world was quiet. So, he wore noise-cancelling earbuds and walked around. At that time, he finally understood the deaf’s world. How lonely and scary it was to live without sound. Moreover, I liked it when his father answered his mom whether he was ok or not if their son’s girlfriend was deaf and he answered it was ok as long as she was a good person. That was enough.
Things that I liked about this film the most was that it did not try to let audience know how hard it was to live as the deaf. Instead, it wanted to show that the deaf’s life was no different than normal people. They could do many things just like normal people do and they really did not want to receive anyone’s pity. I think this was the point that this film wanted to tell audience the most. Besides, another them of this film was it was ok if you could not find yourself yet. One day, you would find yourself while living but you needed to do something to find out about it not just to stay still and did nothing. The last point was live your life as yours not others. You needed to cherish and take care of your life. Do not forget to love yourself and live as your life. Live up for your name.
