Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Blink’ Review: Slight but Moving Nat Geo Doc Follows a Family of Six on an Unusual Bucket-List Trip
Canadian couple Édith Lemay and Sebastian Pelletier are blessed with four children, but three have a congenital condition which means that before too long they will lose their sight. To enable them to see all the sights they will soon no longer be able to experience for themselves, and enjoy memories rather than just descriptions, their parents decide to take them on a grand tour. As a starting point for a National Geographic-backed documentary, this situation has plenty of potential — the circumstances are self-evidently emotional, and as a relatively little-known condition, there’s also the possibility of raising awareness of the specific issue of retinitis pigmentosa for a wider audience, as well as a broader opportunity to represent the lived experience of visual impairment onscreen.
Edmund Stenson and “Navalny” director Daniel Roher’s film opens with a spectacular, “Lord of the Rings”-like shot of six tiny figures trekking across a remote snow-blown landscape, seen above from a God’s-eye view and then silhouetted against the horizon. The imagery conveys a sense of humankind’s littleness, struggling on, against the backdrop of a wider natural world which is indifferent to their hopes and dreams. This could have functioned as a microcosm of the film’s overall arc, though the filmmakers are determined to deliver a cozier take on the arguably bleak narrative. The sight loss the children are experiencing is irreversible, and it’s naturally difficult to find the positive angle on that, but their parents are determined to give it their best shot, and the film follows their lead.
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Embracing a fly-on-the-wall approach, Stenson and Roher take their time to introduce the family at their home in Montreal. We learn that Léo, aged nine, is the most imaginative — and he is also the only child without retinitis pigmentosa. Eleven-year-old Mia is characterized as the boss, a type-A leader in the classic eldest-child mode. Her younger brother Colin, age six, is the kooky one, while the baby of the family, 4-year-old Laurent, is described by his parents as a philosopher. We also meet their parents. Édith is the more communicative, laughingly describing the process of childrearing as one of trying to gain some sort of control, until you get to four children, at which point you have to throw your hands up and “accept chaos.”
There is also time for some detail on their condition, a tragically irreversible process whereby cells in the retina are slowly dying, little by little, meaning Mia’s, Colin’s and Laurent’s fields of vision will gradually shrink until they can no longer see. One of the most heartbreaking moments in the film comes some way into the ambitious trip around the world, where Laurent reveals that despite it being talked about constantly, he doesn’t actually understand what it means to go blind. He’s very small, so that’s understandable, though there’s also room to wonder whether the focus on planning the fabulous adventure around the world as a positive way of dealing with the children’s condition has overshadowed having time and space to reckon with the material facts.
Indeed, the conclusion the film reaches gestures in this direction, with the sentiment that perhaps the most important thing is that the family experience quality time with each other, more than seeing giraffes and camels and hiking the Himalayas. This is borne out in a larger sense by the film itself: We’ve all seen breathtaking footage of the natural world before and it’s hard to beat David Attenborough and compant in that respect, but the eye-level footage of the children playing together, wrestling and fighting and engaging with imaginary worlds of their own devising feels fresh.
The most moving section of all comes near the end, back in Canada, where the three children who will lose their sight are playing with three puppies. In some ways, it’s an ordinary enough scene, but the puppies aren’t just puppies: They are guide dogs in training.
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