BLIND

BLIND © Kim Saatveldt

SURREAL DISABILITIES AT BERLINALE PANORAMA

(Norway / Netherlands 2014, by Eskil Vogt with Vera Vitali, Henrik Rafaelsen, Elena Dorrit Petersen)

Critique by Sieva Diamantakos

The characters in BLIND are a woman (Elin) that came from Sweden to live alone in Oslo after she has left her husband and her son, whom she barely sees. A couple (Ingrid and Morten), she just turned blind because of a rare illness while apparently her husband is cheating on her.

The last character is a lonely man (Einar), in the middle of his thirties, that indulges himself in all the perversions offered by the internet porn market. It’s difficult at first to recognise who’s the main character in the story. The director Eskil Vogt seems to present different situations tied by a thread that will be revealed just in the end. And in a sense it would be true, but only one story is really happening, the others are just in Ingrid’s mind, when her blindness turns into paranoia, creating unreal situations  that are products of her weaknesses.

This becomes clear just towards the end, though the director wisely rations some “mistakes” that warn you that something is wrong. These hints are anyway too feeble to grasp what is happening. At first I thought the roles were changing as in David Lynch’s movies. Or as in Cet obscure object du désir by Luis Bunuel. 

Nevertheless Ingrid thinks that her husband is betraying her with that Swedish woman, her fantasy goes further when her mind unfolds a scene in the restaurant where they meet and Elin, the new lover, turns blind due to the same illness she is suffering.

The sequence is shot with realism so that is difficult to understand whether it is really happening or not; thus the scene becomes even more effective. The characters are acting naturally, as they have been presented until now, so when you realise that everything is illusory, you understand how deep Ingrid’s mental disorder is.

In her desperation she struggles to keep her material life in focus, which is already a huge issue in a world in which we tend more and more to ignore the other senses in favour of sight. But her inner conflict is much worse, as she looses her faith to her husband who cannot longer see, and, because of that, all her insecurities take over and leave her in a state of constant threats.

The story twists at this climax, the scenes become distorted, touching the boundaries of the surreal, as in the party at the end of the movie.

Another interesting point of the plot is when Einar meets Elin and starts having sexual fantasies about her, due to the fact that she is blind. He’s used to watch porn every day for hours so she cannot be more than a sexual object for him.

The more the plot develops, the deeper the story gets, laying on two levels: The characters’ psychology and the reflection about our society dominated by technology. Ingrid believed in what she saw. Einar lives his life obsessed by virtual perversions, that help him to cope with his anxiety. Even when he seems to look after a real woman (Elin), he’s excited only by the fact  that she cannot see, replicating the same one-sided relation he has while indulging in porn sites; he watches, gets aroused, but he’s not being watched so basically he can’t be judged.

There’s a sense of powerlessness in this film, the world we are living has become too liquid, due mainly to internet and the latest technology developments, while our fears easily take over on our weak minds.

But this layer of pessimism and loneliness well represented also by a cold photography are mixed with sense of irony and the surreal, especially in the last scenes, that balance a movie that otherwise would have been too hard to digest.

Instead, this story is a gem that questions the nature of our knowledge and our souls, which have become too dependent on what we see.

Rating: * * * *

 

Blind © Kim Saatveldt