BRATTLEBORO — Filmmaker Mike Turner's The Way We Talk is an exploration of what it feels like to be a person who stutters.
This film is no dry investigation of therapies. Nor is it an “inspiring” story of the usual how-I-suffered-with-and-then- overcame-my-disability sort. There is not much patting oneself on the back (or, conversely, hand-wringing).
“Why me?” though, a plaintive question that repeatedly comes up in the filmmaker's narrative, is something of a subtext of The Way We Talk.
Turner, himself a lifelong stutterer, has made a documentary that looks at recently found genetic connections and convincingly debunks the old chestnut about faulty mothering and other psychological traumas as causes of stuttering. His mother, repeatedly interviewed in the film, comes across as compassionate and open.
Turner harbors little resentment, seeking instead to understand the biological roots of his stutter and what it has meant for his self identity.
On the IMDB page for the film, he summarizes his film: “As I confront my own stuttering, I reflect on how the way I talk has shaped my identity and my family story.”
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Without prejudgment, or, it seemed at times, even knowing exactly where his film was taking him, Michael Turner has given us an eyes-wide-open entry into the world of the stutterer that unfolds organically.
It is a world I know well, through having lived for years with someone who stuttered and who participated with great enthusiasm in the self-help movement.
The filmmaker gratifyingly touches on the main issues that cause the people who stutter to struggle. The issues are not always directly the stutter itself, but rather the secondary effects such as shame, frustration, and sense of isolation.
In deference to the stuttering community, I will use the term “person (or people) who stutter,” which is preferred to “stutterer,” as it puts the person first - so important to the whole-self healing of the secondary aspects of stuttering.
The journey toward this more enlightened viewpoint for both the person who stutters and the general public, is at the heart of The Way We Talk.
There are wonderful sections in the film that deal with therapies. Turner has found a therapist, Glenn Weybright, who himself stutters and is a breath of fresh air in his willingness to acknowledge that therapies often last only as long as the patient is in the therapist's office.
“Patients are given tools, but in the end,” he says, “we just want to talk.”
“Slow onset,” or intentional sound repetition (these methods are all demonstrated in the film) get thrown to the wind in the heat of conversation. As Weybright puts it, “It's easy to teach tools but it's not real fluency - outside of the office, you just want to talk.”
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The filmmaker uses imagery in an effectively cinematic, at times poetic, way. Early into the narrative, Turner shows a boardwalk he came across near his mother's house that extends out to the open ocean. But it has been blocked off with a big wooden board. His realization that this is exactly what it feels like to stutter sets him on his filmic journey.
We go along with the filmmaker as he lives his life, meets fellow person who stutters, goes on camping trips, at the same time interviewing friends and family members as he seeks answers to questions that come out of his own struggle for self-acceptance.
Time and again, while narrating his film, Turner stutters severely, compelling us to look at our own reactions - and thus face the discomfort that listening to a person who stutters might engender.
And thus we become fellow travelers in Turner's film odyssey. Scenes with his brother, his parents, and his girlfriend are human, warm, and poignantly honest. The candor with which the filmmaker addresses his topic feels incredibly brave.
There are welcome epiphanies along the way.
At one point Turner's young but wise friend Ian, also a person who stutters, says, “If I could just wake up one day and not have my stutter, I'm not sure I would choose that. It's so much a part of who I am. To do that would be to say I don't like myself. And I do. I like who I am.”
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One of the highlights of the film is a trip that Turner and his new wife take to Japan on their honeymoon. He brings us along on a visit to a self-help group in Osaka.
The group leader, a Buddhist, describes his path to liberation which has been intrinsically bound up with his struggles with stuttering –– the liberation of ceasing to do battle with, and be ruled by, his stutter.
Clearly comfortable in his skin when we meet him, the leader provides a remarkable lesson in the power and efficacy of the inner work.
This film is a must-see for anyone who stutters, who has a family member who does, who loves or has loved someone who stutters, and everyone else! After all, so many of the issues are relevant to any part of ourselves we want to change, or hide - parts of our selves that cause us to feel “less than.”
Turner has said that my late partner Marty Jezer's memoir Stuttering: A Life Bound Up in Words has been an inspiration to him. The Way We Talk is itself an important milestone in shedding light on stuttering and those for whom “the way we talk” is a path to love and freedom.