Jodie Foster's "Nell" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Michael Apted

Apted also directed "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Coal Miner's Daughter." Initially, Jodie Foster had planned to direct the film herself and to hire Mary Steenburgen to play the part of Nell. Interestingly, Steenburgen's middle name is Nell. Foster eventually turned the film over to Apted, who was interested in directing it. At first, he offered the part of Nell to Natasha Richardson.

Soon before production began, however, Foster was offered and accepted the part of Nell, and Richardson was cast as Paula Olsen. "Nell" was released in December 1994; Neeson and Richardson were married in July 1994. They met while working on the Broadway production of "Anna Christie" in 1993. Richardson and Neeson have some very meaningful conversations about love and men and women in this film.

Answer: She is dead.

The film opens with a grocery delivery boy discovering the body of a dead elderly woman. This was Nell's mother who had been paralyzed from strokes on one side but who owned millions of dollars worth of property. Nell's mother had decided to live without all modern conveniences, like electricity, running water, etc.

Shortly after this opening scene, Jerry and Paula discover Nell, the dead woman's daughter. Nell has lived in splendid isolation in great beauty with her own special language and perception. Little by little, they discover that Nell had a sister, and that she had become aware of a violence which traumatized her mother. Jerry, in particular, believes in Nell, believes that she is not crazy and should not be locked up in an institution.

Answer: Idioglossia

"Idio" is like idiom and the word "idioglossia" refers to a unique language which few people speak. Nell's mother had a paralyzing stroke which affected her own language and Nell's language in turn. Nell's language is unforgettable, with her unique vocabulary, long vowels and accompanying body flourishes. The language is also a product of her very close relationship with her twin sister. The language has been called "twin speech." Nell says things like "guy-ainja" ("guardian angel"), "Missy Chickapen," "ta-ay" or "tree." In the court hearing, she says to Jerry "spea fur meeee," and Jerry translates what she says much more fluently than the viewer might have thought he would be able to do.

The original play "Idioglossia" was written by Mark Handley and first performed in 1992. Like Nell, the main character in this play comes to adulthood without contacts with modern culture.

Answer: twin sister

Nell had a twin sister, May, who died when Nell was six years old. Nell's full name is Nell Kellty. In the movie, Nell is nearly 30 years old.

Most critics say that Nell's mother was raped violently, and that she hid her girls from the world as a result of this traumatic event. The movie includes Nell's moving memory of her mother telling her of being stabbed in the belly with a knife, which is a description of her mother's feelings of being raped.

Answer: country doctor

Jerry (formally Jerome Lovell) is the doctor who always had faith in Nell, who fights with Paula (Natasha Richardson) over whether or not Nell needs to be hospitalized, both because of Nell's uniqueness and to protect Nell from other people who might take advantage of her. Nell trusts Jerry so much that she asks him to speak for her in court. Some of their scenes together are radiantly saturated with their amazing attachment to each other.

By learning about Nell and about how other people respond to others who are different, Jerry comes to be occasionally cynical, seeing that people sometimes want you, only to later leave you and mess with your mind.

Answer: institutionalize her

Jerry and Paula take Nell away from her home because she has become the object of sensational journalism as a "wild woman' there. Nell implodes in the hospital at first, among other things, because she was reminded of her twin sister.

Paula has a colleague who wants to institutionalize Nell as a kind of oddball. Terribly upset with his lawyer, Jerry steps in to stop this because Nell has not given her "informed consent" to be treated this way. Paula argues that Nell can't give this consent because her language is unknown. Then comes the moment of truth: Nell stands up and addresses the court in her own words. She appears lucid, passionate, and beautiful, saying to Jerry, "Spea fur mee." Then Nell speaks eloquently in her language, and Jerry translates her comments, with the result that she will be freed.

Paula, who has been ambivalent about Nell, rather challengingly notes once when Nell is in a car for the first time on the way to the city: "It's time to show her the big bad world and see how she handles it."

Answer: Crazy

Jerry plays Patsy Cline's 1961 'Crazy," and Nell is obviously so affected by it that Paula tells Jerry to turn it off.

Later, in the hospital, Nell starts to spin around saying "Crazy." That is what others always think about her until the beautiful courtroom scene.

Answer: She had a fall.

May's death, which appears to have been caused by a fall, profoundly influenced Nell. In the hospital, when Nell sees a young patient who looks like her sister, Nell runs full steam ahead into a glass door, at the other side of which is a child patient looking like May. This encounter (and also being in a noisy impersonal city) temporarily sends Nell into a near catatonic state of silence.

In the postscript to the movie, Jerry and Paula are married with a daughter who is an amazing echo of May, Nell's twin sister. The final scene of the movie shows Nell dancing and playing with their daughter.

Answer: He thinks she is totally off-the-wall different and out of control.

The psychologists in general in this film conceive of Nell as dangerously different and in need of control. There is a chilling scene in the psychiatric hospital showing patients in different disturbing stages of mental breakdowns. Being taken through the hospital, one time Nell sees a young patient rather calmly stick out her tongue.

When Nell sticks hers back out, the other patient quickly asks for help and covers her eyes as if in shock. Nell's efforts at communication are misinterpreted very often.

Answer: Dr. Alexander Paley

Dr. Alexander Paley is one of the main psychologists who appraise Nell's condition and who tries to convince Paula that Nell is uncivilized and feral. When Nell has the violent response in the hospital, Dr. Paley is convinced that Nell is unsavable. He cannot see that anyone can care without some kind of ulterior motive and dismisses the relationship that Jerry and Paula are developing with Nell, so he thinks rather cynically that "even caring has a motive."

Paula is a psychologist who works with other people doing specialized research, at a place which values above all objectivity and thoroughness. In the film, Paula is a woman for whom feeling is difficult sometimes. Part of the film's action shows Paula opening up to the feeling that Nell expresses so openly. There is one scene where Nell helps Paula who is suffering from her inability to show feelings. Nell caringly touches Paula's hair and cheeks.

Being with Nell and Jerry helps Paula to discover another way of being in life -- a caring way, an empathetic way.