Blindsight

Blindsight (UK, dir­ector Lucy Walker): I loved this, and not just for the obvious reasons. Blindsight is a doc­u­mentary about a group of blind Tibetan teen­agers who attempt to climb one of Mount Everest’s sister peaks. Now, this kind of thing is usu­ally a can’t miss. Inspirational. Moving. Pretty standard, right? And even if the film were just that, I’d still have liked it. But it was so much more. Blind her­self, German Sabriye Tenberken estab­lished a school for blind chil­dren in Tibet, in a cul­ture that sees blind­ness as a curse, as evid­ence that a person did bad things in a pre­vious life. Many of the chil­dren at the school have been shunned their whole lives, and at best, are a burden to their fam­ilies. As part of their edu­ca­tion, Tenberken shares with them the story of American Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. She sends him a letter inviting him to come and visit her stu­dents. Instead, he comes up with a plan. He’ll arrange an exped­i­tion for them to climb 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri and provide all the guides and equip­ment. Sabriye finds six willing par­ti­cipants and this is when the fun starts.

Erik’s team are mostly American, mostly male, and mostly sighted. As exper­i­enced moun­tain­eers, they’re Type-A per­son­al­ities, very gung-ho and goal-oriented. Sabriye is European, female, and blind, and the stu­dents for her are more than a “pro­ject,” no matter how well-intentioned. Additionally, the stu­dents are Tibetan, and not old enough or con­fident enough to always stand up for them­selves. As the exped­i­tion unfolds, they become pawns in between the two adult “sides,” wanting to please both, while at the same time wanting to gain the con­fid­ence that comes from accom­plish­ment. As an addi­tional obstacle (other than being blind, that is), they are speaking English as a second or in most cases, a third lan­guage, and struggle to under­stand and make them­selves understood.

When it turns out that none of the stu­dents have any climbing exper­i­ence, and that some are much more coordin­ated than others, it begins to unravel Erik’s ori­ginal plan for them all to reach the summit together. As both stu­dents and teachers begin to suffer the effects of high alti­tude, decisions must be made as to whether to con­tinue on or to send some down the moun­tain. Among the effects of high alti­tude is increased irrit­ab­ility, and you can see how this feeds the con­flict between the adults. At the risk of over­sim­pli­fying, on one side are those for whom the des­tin­a­tion is all, and on the other are those who just want to enjoy the journey. I won’t tell you how it all turns out, except to say that this was one of the most sur­prising and thought-provoking stories I’ve seen in a long time.

The film also weaves bits of each climber’s story into the nar­rative, and this was sorely needed, since once on the climb, the kids tended to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. With all the drama going on around them, that wasn’t sur­prising. The back­stories are by turns charming and heart­breaking, and I found it very strange that I found myself closer to tears at the begin­ning of the film than at the end. This was con­trary to my expect­a­tions, and another pleasant surprise.

In addi­tion to all the human drama to cover, dir­ector Walker and her small crew had to con­tend with the frigid and oxygen-deprived con­di­tions her­self, lug­ging equip­ment up the moun­tains and hoping it wouldn’t break down. As with all great doc­u­ment­aries, the film­maker was just lucky enough (or smart enough, or pre­pared enough) to be at the right place at the right time, and she’s cap­tured a very spe­cial story that has as much to say about people who want to do “what’s best for the kids” as it does about the kids themselves.

Visit the film’s web site

Braille Without Borders (Sabriye Tenberken’s organization)

(10/10)

Tagged as: blindness, tibet