BLINDSIGHT
UK, 2006, 104 minutes, Colour.
Sabriye Tenberken, Erik Weihenmayer.
Directed by Lucy Walker.
Blindsight is a documentary that urges faith in human nature and its goodness.
The title refers to the experience of people who are blind but who have their others senses heightened and experience so much of the reality around them without seeing it.
If you hear that this is a documentary about a group of blind teenagers who climb a peak adjacent to Everest, you have not heard wrongly. How could this happen?
The film opens with some footage of an American man, Erik Weihenmeyer, who went blind young and who was challenged to take up rock climbing in his native Colorado. Eventually, he scaled Everest and we see him climbing, tip-toeing over bridges, arriving triumphantly on the summit. Weihenmeyer also published an account of his feat which caught the attention of a blind German woman, Sabriye Tenberken, who had trekked to Tibet and established an organisation, Braille Without Borders, and collected children for her school, children who had been rejected by society which judged that they must have done something evil in a previous life to have been so afflicted. Sabriye made contact with Erik who came to Tibet with a plan for some of the students to climb a mountain and for the adventure to be filmed.
The narrative has quite some dramatic impact. The preparations for the climb – the students had little experience of rock climbing – the mental and psychological conditions and the practicalities of young people without sight managing on the mountains. A range of experienced sighted guides flew in to Lhassa to work with the youngsters.
The trek itself has its moments of drama with personal challenges but the progress is interspersed with the personal stories of each of the teenagers. These offer quite some insight into the range of Chinese and Tibetan life and customs.
Director Lucy Walker and the camera crew are quite unobtrusive but still immerse us in the day by day ascent, the difficulties, the illnesses, the indomitable spirit as well as the disappointments in those who are unable to reach the summit. The photography of the mountains is crystal clear, continually breathtaking and fascinating.
A verb is used at the beginning of the film to describe Erik’s achievement: to summit. This is key to the meaning of the experience for the climbers. Sabriye, whom some of the guides thinks is over-protective, is concerned about the pushing of the youngsters to achieve and reach the top. She strongly makes the point that the aim of the experience is not to summit but to build a sense of solidarity amongst the group, care for the weakest amongst them and growth in self-esteem and confidence from the experience that most sighted people would not be able to experience.
Rightly uplifting. (A feature film was made of Erik Weihenmeyer's life and his climbing Everest, Touch the Top of the World, with Peter Facinelli, 2006.)
1.The impact of the film? The achievement of the blind students? The mountaineering? The sense of community? Perseverance and achievement?
2.The Tibetan settings? The mountains, Mount Everest? The clarity of the photography? The peaks, the rocks, the formations, the snow and ice? The audience vividly immersed in the mountains? The base camps? Life on the mountain?
3.The title, the reference to the blind people, the nickname for blindsight(*?) and their awareness despite the impairment?
4.The introduction to Erik Weihenmayer, his story, losing his sight, the challenge to climb rocks, his going to the mountains, the film of his climbing of Everest? His achievement? His book? The email from Sabriye Tenberken? His response, going to Tibet? The plan for the climb, the filming of the climb?
5.Sabriye Tenberken, her partner Paul Kronenberg? Their organisation of Braille Beyond Borders? Her own blindness, German background, coming to Tibet, adventurous, travel? Gathering the students, establishing the school? Her achievement, her concern, the trip, the issue of trust in the guides, in Erik, her protectiveness and the challenge to this? Her worry about the ill students? The final discussions, her emphasis on teamwork, the achievement and sense of community, the concern for the weakest of the group? Rather than necessarily have to reach a summit?
6.The issue of the climb? The use of the verb at the beginning of the film, to summit? The western idea of climbing and achieving? The Asian idea of the experience? Especially for the blind children who would not see the view? Their experience of climb, rocks, breathing, health and illness? Helping one another? The sense of touch and hearing?
7.The preparation for the trek, the introduction to the variety of guides and their internationality? Their philosophies, concern, the doctor?
8.The training of the students, the climbing of rocks, a sense of letting go, careful with their feet? Feeling?
9.The interspersion of the stories about the students themselves? Boys and girls? The stigma of blindness in Tibet, assuming evil done in a previous life? The reality of reincarnation? The street boy, really Chinese, his hard life, being taken to find his father, his brother? His wanting to do massage? His illness on the climb? The boy who was a strong Buddhist, his family, the farm? His later joining with the Chinese boy for the massage? The young women, their abilities, their families, the treatment they received for being blind? The other boys and girls? The range of ages?
10.The maps, the indicating of the achievement, the trek? The experience of walking, climbing, thin air, headaches? The tents, the Sherpas, the yaks? The continued ascent?
11.Crises, health? The decision for the young man to go down? The headaches for the girl? Her disappointment and feeling that she was letting people down?
12.The weather, the gathering storms? The needs for people to go down?
13.The final achievement, the experience? People ready to criticise the adventure? Overcoming prejudice?
14.The aftermath, the boy singing the song during the final credits? The narrative and the information about what happened to each of the young people? Affirmation, self-confidence, achievement?
