My students and friends know I bandy about the term “masterpiece” fairly easily, but there are a lot of films I really love. While some of those are pretty commonly accepted (Vertigo, Rashomon, Citizen Kane), I can go into a deeper list easily (Brief Encounter, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Bigger Than Life, The Go-Between, etc., etc.). With Wiseman, I don’t like just going with the accepted wisdom, which seems to favor Welfare among the earlier films and maybe In Jackson Heights among the later. I also think the lack of weak entries in his body of films makes the mountain range already pretty towering, so why say that you think one peak is a little bit higher than the rest. That said, I have to express the feeling that Blind and Near Death are both incredible movies, so really great that if I do nothing else here beyond getting you to watch these two, I’ll feel like I’ve done something useful. And of these two, Blind especially just needs to be seen, since it’s sort of buried in a tetralogy of strong films and because the title doesn’t sound promising, can be too easily not given sufficient attention. Near Death we’ll get to when its turn comes.
The order of this group of four films, Blind, Deaf, Work & Adjustment, and Multi-Handicapped doesn’t seem entirely established because they were more or less released together. Wiseman shot them all at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind at Talladega. They were initially shown on four successive nights on PBS as the “Deaf and Blind” series. (While they were shown on PBS like most of his films, I think he financed them out of his MacArthur “Genius” grant which he received around that time and who are thanked in his end credits.). I first saw them, I think it was in 1987, at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where they played in an out-of-the-way screening room as a pair of double bills on successive days. There was literally an audience of eight at these showings. Wiseman was there both days, and was great in taking this small group as seriously in answering their questions and speaking at considerable length as he would with much larger groups. This was also the order these were shown on that occasion, so I’ll follow that order too, even though for no apparent reason Wiseman’s Wikipedia entry has them jumbled.
While the title Blind is pretty easy and obvious, given that it’s filmed at a school for the blind, once you see the movie, I think it’s very possible to see it as one of those ambiguous Wiseman titles like Primate and Meat which extend beyond the simple label. We can be blind to the blind, and we sighted ones can both take that gift for granted and also ourselves be limited in our vision, meaning in our knowledge or understanding. Wiseman’s movie Blind, in its direct humanism, is one of those rare films that can make you see things.
The film starts by pretending to be other than it is. We’re at Talladega Speedway on the day of the Winston 500 NASCAR race (back when cigarette companies could name races), and we see enough of crowds streaming into a big sporting event to feel as if we’re in a sequel to Racetrack. When we get an announcer pitching Goody Headache Powders as "the official pain reliever of NASCAR”, it starts to feel like we’re in familiar territory, as if Wiseman is saying here’s the film he could have made if he wanted to take an easier path. So who could have predicted four interlocking films set at a school for handicapped children? At this race, a small group of blind kids has arrived on a bus to perform in a pre-race ceremony. It starts feeling Wisemanesque when they disembark and begin an impromptu warmup version of "My Blue Heaven”, dominated by a clarinet solo, though after a proper introduction, they perform “Gonna Fly Now” before getting back on the bus and returning to their school.
We might expect a film about a school for the blind to be something of a downer, but it’s anything but. It deserves “Gonna Fly Now” more than the melodramatic Rocky that spawned it. If you can think of a more inspiring film than Blind, I’d like to know what it is. Early in the film are two sequences in quick succession that are positively thrilling. In the first, a young boy (six or seven maybe) has just received an A on his paper, and he’s so excited by that he wants to go show it to a teacher in a room on a downstairs floor. He assures his upstairs teacher that he can find his way himself, as the kid, Jason by name, is all enthusiasm and confidence. Off he goes down a long hallway, as the camera follows behind him. It’s a tracking shot so mesmerizing as to put Kubrick following Danny Torrance on his tricycle to shame. It’s a terrifying moment as Jason approaches the stairs, but he navigates it beautifully, and turns the corner great too. Then it’s down a long hall, he finds the room and shows the paper to the teacher he was looking for. I think this was already brilliant beyond belief, but trust Wiseman to give you more than you expected, as we then follow behind him as Jason then makes the return trip! The kid is just so ebullient and talented, and following behind him during this entire journey such a great thing to show, that I felt like, as much as I love Kubrick and Ophuls for their tracking shots, this is the example to praise to the skies, a truly heroic journey that we’re privileged to be a part of. We’re only twenty-five minutes into a two-hour film, but Blind is already a great film.
Matching Jason’s trip, soon after a young girl embarks on a similar voyage with her teacher in search of a kid-size water fountain. She’s being taught, with an endearing patience and concern, how to navigate with a cane. It's another great tracking shot as we go out the door and into the next building, with accompanying instruction about the differences to be recognized between doors and potential pitfalls that the cane can assist with. The teacher is so patient, and the young girl so smart and ebullient about what she's accomplishing that this trip becomes just as exciting as Jason’s. When she finally reaches a water fountain suited to her height and she takes a sip, in her delight at her success she says to her teacher "I deserved a drink of water for that, didn't I?” It’s so great to watch, you have no idea until you see if for yourself. Wiseman again let’s us see the return trip to her classroom, and observing her learn how to navigate going downstairs is a wonder to behold. When she’s back in her classroom, she proudly announces "I've been working with a cane.” We can’t be any prouder ourselves for having witnessed the journey. By the time we’ve gone along with these two trips, we’re more in awe of the kids’ resourcefulness to ever allow any opportunity to feel sorry for them.
The contributions made by teachers has been a Wiseman interest from High School on, although here, as hard as I look, I can’t see evidence of irony or criticism. There is an element of control and processing to teaching that in High School was pretty suspect, I suppose the case could be made here that social values are wrapped up in how the blind are taught, and that control over how they will live is implied. When so much emphasis is placed upon basic skills, it’s difficult to find much that needs questioning. Rather, the teachers are wonderfully kind and patient, and their successes are evident. It’s simply delightful to see such smart and talented kids doing so well. There’s a class where the students have written essays about what it means to be American, where they read their own Braille and we hear two essays read in their entirety. We might be on the prowl for either hidden agendas of pushing values on the students that might sound questionable or seeing some divide between ideals and their actualities. Instead, I think we marvel at how cool and funny the first black kid is reading his essay, a born performer, and when the teacher starts asking them when they feel pride and this kid says he was born with it, it’s such a winning moment that any suspicions of submerged criticism disappear. They talk about what values they expect to have later in life as parents, and their answers are so smart and gleeful that you have to marvel at how the whole class is conducted and how impressive the kids are. At least that’s my take.
Where in High School the range of activities being taught suggested forms of control, here the takeaway is much more how interested the school is in developing a full range of possibilities. Music was evident with the band at the beginning, and later there’s a wonderful short scene where a piano teacher gets a student with thick glasses and using a heavy magnifier to work his way through a difficult musical passage. The Braille classes are a world away from the typing and English classes in High School, and when a disco dance exercise class here reminds us of “Simon Says” in High School, somehow here it’s less about being regimented and more about empowering - the girls now are genuinely having fun waving their arms and jumping up and down. Teaching a child how to count out change doesn’t become about the money or when in a class a teacher says "The first thing you have to realize is that you can do it”, like most of Blind, these come across as genuinely helpful and sincere expressions.
We can note the Wisemanesque nature of some of the things shown, while still registering them as not overpowering. There’s a scene where a boy goes into some detail with a counselor about his father’s multiple divorces, but that too feels like it’s here for its multiple complications than for a reflection of larger issues. We do get a number of scenes of disciplinary problems, one of them serious enough to lead to the child’s expulsion from school, but there’s an emphasis upon the parents’ cooperation and also the alternative of trade school as a result (though sounding a bit like Juvenile Court in its punishment). We do hear that paddling or spanking is sometimes a form of punishment, but in a case under extensive discussion by a group of teachers, it’s decided not to employ it.
What has a nice Wiseman feel to it are subjects that come up in the classroom where observations are made that apply more broadly, directed back at us as viewers or as comments which can be taken more broadly. When a child is tested for visual memory by removing items and then having them recall what’s gone, it’s a bit of a challenge, and when he misses once, the teacher suggests “We’re not paying attention to what we see, are we?’, one of those questions that can bounce right back at us, as Wiseman films demand more attention than most. In another class considering animal cells, they make the conclusion that animal cells “must depend upon other cells in the body”, as opposed to a single cell organism. We can take this to apply either to the school as institution or society as a whole, where depending upon others is central to life. Whether discussing American values and the importance of freedom of choice or students talk about how much they like to go to bookstores, museums, and libraries, there’s an encouraging sense of connection to the world outside. Towards the end of the film, some teachers talk about plans to connect their school to outside public schools, and makes the correct argument that this is to the benefit of both, that the rest of the world would benefit with more contact with their kids. I couldn’t agree more.