Vakon

POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILERS. This is not so much a drama about blindness as it is a playful essay about unreliable storytelling. Ingrid uses making up stories as a form of training or a therapeutic aid for re-establishing contact with the world and regaining her lost confidence. She projects her own feelings, fears and desires into her characters. Einar’s voyeurism, in which he sees but is not seen, is the reverse of Ingrid’s situation, as she doesn’t see and wants to be seen (see the image from the poster or the last scene of the film). With the character of Elin, the narrator can try out what it would be like to be a mother. The boundary between the imaginary and real worlds begins to break down when Morten becomes another character in the stories and Ingrid takes revenge on his fictional representation for what her husband has done (or perhaps didn’t do). The highly subjectivised narrative, which offers no guarantee that what we are seeing is not merely Ingrid’s version of reality, prevents us from better knowing (or rather seeing) reality. However, the perception of a sighted person who creates his or her own cognitive map based on direct visual stimuli (this always involves an individual construction of the brain) is equally unreliable. By forcing us to constantly reassess the veracity of what we see, the film alerts us to the essential unreliability of visual perception and the impossibility of generalising visual imagination. Or, as we learn in the introduction of every linguistics textbook and in the first shots of Blind, when you say “dog”, it’s a different dog for everyone. The film thematises the necessarily mediated nature of reality by disregarding established stylistic techniques (non-sequential shots, jumps across the axis, distracting work with lighting, rejection of the shot/counter-shot technique) in relation to the protagonist’s disability. Rather, it leads us to reflect on our own vision and to actively fill in the missing visual clues. By involving ourselves in this game, we can at least to some degree experience what the protagonist is going through and perhaps subsequently start to use our own imaginations more. Ingrid’s capacity for “seeing” (creating) the world as she would like it to be liberates her and restores her faith in herself and her abilities (I consider the transformation of the joke about a black man on a bicycle into reality to be essential for understanding the change in her attitude). 85% (2015.06.14)

(49th KVIFF) Blind is a brilliantly shot and acted drama, but it’s biggest strength is undoubtedly its script, in particular, the way it tells the story through editing and lets the viewer figure out what is actually going on. I think that everyone in the theatre noticed “those things I don’t want to reveal” and realised their meaning, as well as their link to a completely different film. The moment I realised it, I was ecstatic. These are the sort of things I like in films, and I can’t wait to watch this one again. There will certainly something to discover. (2014.07.08)

Blindness as both an open gateway to one's own imagination and a license to project oneself fully in it and make everything in it allowed. Not to mention the fact that some things are already slowly losing their contours, colors, or merging with others. Excellent and ambitious art (but in this case, not to be feared), sympathetic in the way it plays with the script (key objects appearing here and there in the plot) and the camera (changing environments during one scene and confusing the viewer as to what is actually reality and what is not). A terribly successful debut. (2015.01.25)

An interesting look at what life can look like for a woman who suddenly went blind. It's not a directly harsh view, at least not always, but there are scenes here that will blow you away, including some that are quite civil. For example, the scene in the restaurant was incredible, yet so simple. But awesome. Overall, it’s slightly above average. (2016.10.10)