The world of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is filled with broken people, characters who are damaged and hurt and unlikely to find a way out of their circumstances. It is there that Alan Arkin's John Singer finds a home. A deaf-mute in the South of the 1960s, his only friend is a mentally challenged individual named Antonapoulos. But when Antonapoulos is institutionalized, Singer moves to a town near the facility to be closer to his friend, and rents a room from a family struggling with the recent crippling injury of their patriarch. There's a very special aspect of Arkin's performance that is particularly worthy of note -- despite the fact that he can't speak or hear, the character never comes off as dumb or slow, which is something that a lot of actors struggle with. His intelligence and dignity is significant to the film, as he becomes friends with the family's teenage daughter, but never becomes cloyingly sentimental.