Annie takes Helen outside to refill a water pitcher she spilled during a tantrum at the pump and the long-awaited breakthrough is made. During Helen’s homecoming dinner she begins to revert to her old ways of acting.

Using sign language and signing the letters to spell words in Helen’s open palm, Annie makes large strides toward improving Helen’s behavior.Īfter two weeks of living alone with Helen in a small house on the Keller family plantation Annie is still unable to reach a break through with Helen when her mandated time deadline is reached.

Annie’s goal is to not just teach Helen to behave but to break through to her with the gift of communication. Annie’s job as Helen’s teacher is made more difficult by Helen’s imperious plantation-owner father, Arthur (David Strathairn), and her overly soft-hearted mother, Kate (Kate Greenhouse), when they doubt her authority and challenge her methods. Plagued with vision problems of her own and orphaned at a young age, Annie Sullivan has the right mix of steeliness, empathy and patience to turn her young student's behavior around and teach her language. She is barely pacified with candy when she throws a tantrum and is headed toward institutionalization in a sanitarium when Annie enters her life as Helen’s parents' last-ditch effort to avoid the inevitable. Her family loves her but they are all convinced she is a dumb, soft-brained child with the intelligence of an animal who will never learn anything. All of this while being looked at with pity by her family. She is allowed to eat with her hands, knock over or break anything, and basically do whatever else she desires. Helen has been unable to communicate with her family except through physical temper tantrums since a childhood illness took her three senses from her at the age of 18 months. The movie focuses on Annie’s struggle to draw Helen, a blind, deaf, and mute girl out of her world of darkness and silence. This movie is the story about Annie Sullivan, ( Alison Elliott), and her efforts in working with a young sullen Helen Keller ( Hallie Kate Eisenberg). It is based on the life of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan's struggles to teach her. English Source The Miracle Worker is a 2000 television remake of the two films with the same name from 19.

Annie sullivan the miracle worker