Blink is a warm, shattering documentary about a Montreal couple in a race to show their children as much of the world's beauty as possible -- before progressive, incurable blindness plunges the youngsters into permanent darkness.
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Blink
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Rating: PG
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Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes
Directors: Daniel Roher, Edmund Stenson
Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu
Movies about tragedy morphing into triumph are a dime a dozen. Rarer are films in which triumph does, indeed, arise, but the tragedy persists, nonetheless.
Such is the true story of Blink, a warm, shattering documentary about a Montreal couple in a race to show their children as much of the world's beauty as possible -- before progressive, incurable blindness plunges the youngsters into permanent darkness.
Édith Lemay and Sébastien Pelletier reacted the way most parents would to learning three of their four children had genetic retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that steadily diminishes a person's field of vision until there is little or none left. Shock gave way to sadness and, they admit, anger. But then that parental determination to do something about it kicked in -- and that's what drives the narrative of this unusually inspiring film.
The couple's daughter, Mia, now 12, was diagnosed first, followed by her little brothers Colin, 8, and Laurent, 6. Only 10-year-old Leo does not have the condition. Consulting with experts, Édith was told to spend time flipping through endless picture and photo books with her kids, helping them build up a visual vocabulary they could draw upon when their vision failed them.
But after thinking about it, Édith and Sébastien decided to do that prescription one better: They would put their lives on hold, scrape together every dime they could, and spend a year traveling with their children, imprinting their memories with a lifetime supply of in-person camels, mountains, beaches, and cities. Each child contributed to the family bucket list, and nothing was automatically ruled out.
Blink follows the family on their journey of visual wonders, from the African savannah to the pyramids of Egypt to the muddy waters of the Amazon. Some of their adventures seem just about right for a young family -- ballooning, for one; camping out in Egypt's barren White Desert, for another. Others are, in retrospect, probably inadvisable for little children of any ability, such as a 9-day hike through the Himalaya (which was, admittedly, Dad's idea).
But Blink is more than a carefree global jaunt in the company of two resourceful parents and their four rambunctious youngsters. The film's power comes from not only its tragic subtext, but also from the children's growing understanding of the reason behind this globetrotting adventure. It is on that Himalaya jaunt that little Laurent finally asks his mother, "What does it mean to be blind?" Her gentle but forthright response -- It's like closing your eyes and never opening them again -- is as shattering a passage as any scripted moment you'll find in film. After processing that image for a bit, Laurent later announces he wants to be a doctor, so he can find a cure for blindness.
"Or if I can't cure blindness," he adds, "I'll invent a machine." Wisely, his parents don't press Laurent on just what that machine will do, leaving the notion comfortably wrapped in the misty optimism of childhood imagination.
Blink is rich in such poignant moments: Trapped for nine hours on a broken-down gondola in the mountains of South America, enveloped in the darkness of night, Mia suffers a sobbing panic attack the likes of which her parents have never seen before.
Finally rescued in the early morning hours, Édith comes to a realization. "It was a preview of what's to come for her," she says.
Co-directors David Roher (an Oscar winner for 2023's Navalny) and first-time feature documentarian Edmund Stenson take pains to etch vivid portraits of each family member, particularly the children: The boys are defined pretty deliberately as the studious one, the unpredictable one, and the wild one. Mia, on the other hand, is painted with more florid strokes; a girl emerging into adolescence, casting her fading gaze toward an adulthood that will be unlike that of any of her friends. In one of the film's loveliest scenes, the camera of cinematographer Jean-Sébastien Francoeur lingers on Mia from a distance, tracing her moves atop a Sahara dune, dancing to music only she can hear.
Stubbornly steering clear of cheap sentimentality but never averting its gaze from the bittersweet nature of a family's high adventure, Blink is a rare achievement: A wide-eyed testament to the unique brand of bravery only families, standing astride misfortune with a defiant, come-and-get-us stance, can nurture.
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