I was terribly excited to see the movie Blindsight; I’d been captivated by the premise of the film ever since I saw one of its stars, Sabriye Tenberken, a German school teacher who lost her sight as a teenager, speak on local television. When her country’s Peace Corps wouldn’t accept her and her handicap, Tenberken single handedly took her mission to help the sightless overseas to Tibet, where blindness is shunned and stigmatized beyond belief. After opening a school for the blind and establishing the Tibetan chapter of Brail without Borders, Tenberken partnered with another extraordinary soul, Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to conquer and climb Mt. Everest. Together, the two gathered a group of six Tibetan teens, eager to prove to their country and the entire world that blindness is without boundaries. The band of students, teachers, athletes, and outdoor aficionados became heroes in their stoic climb of the summit at Lhakpa Ri, 23,000 feet into the sky. Blindsight documents their lives, their shared passion, and their mountain mission.

There is a very tragic irony in going to see a movie about the blind. One questions the importance of film at all when it is realized that its subjects, even its creators could possibly never see the fruition of their hard work on screen. It’s a heavy feeling, a very real awareness of the world’s many dimensions, where senses are separated and unevenly experienced by all. Blindsight made me bawl on more than one occasion, but in the spirit of really understanding the relative unimportance of sight, I realized my tears came not from what I saw, but what I felt.

This documentary is the most profound, reality-television-styled piece of film I have ever seen. It chronicles the lives of the six children, their families, and their mountain guides against the backdrop of the exhausting, rather terrifying climb up the gigantic mountain peak. The entire piece is narrated so stunningly; each child giving gifts of wisdom with very basic and English that beautifully expresses the pain of their pasts and the hopes of their futures. For what it’s worth, Blindsight really is a visual feast for those of us that can see it; the aerial views of the Himalayas are astounding and frighteningly powerful. Fascinatingly, and sadly enough, Tibet is a country abounding in every shade of the rainbow. The film captures a culture infused with so much color that it’s a sin to see its blind children dressed in delicately printed and vibrantly tinted fabrics they themselves cannot see.

Blindsight could have very well sickened me with sentimentality, but it doesn’t, and that is the true testament to the quality of this film. There is no political statement here, but a very sincere effort to capture the beauty of the universe through sound, smell, and selfless suffering. And as far as I’m concerned, the blind climb up one of the world’s most treacherous mountains was a sweeping success, if only for the birth of this film. As one child put it, the experience gave her a ‘golden chance’ to prove her humanity. Most of us mistake gold for eye candy; Blindsight was quite an eye opener to what is really precious on earth: friendship.

Liz Licorish
LizFlix@ElitesTV.com