Earlier this week I watched John Lee Hancock's The Blind Side. I'd been meaning to watch it way back when Oscar buzz started swarming around that Sandra Bullock stood a good chance to take the prize for Best Actress. I was even more curious after hearing it had been nominated for best picture (a no chance of winning nominee, but still a nominee). Nonsense I thought. It looked like every other movie of its "based on the inspirational true story" kind: conventional, cutesy, schmaltz, peppered with some decent performances to give the stale proceedings some freshness. Well, a year later I finally watch it and I was right. Kudos, me. What took me by surprise however was that the movie was not about Michael Oher, but about Leigh Anne Tuohy's (Sandra Bullock's character) role in getting him there.
Ostensibly the film is a family-friendly tale about overcoming adversity but it sidesteps the realities of Michael's struggle, making them nothing more than burdens for Leigh Anne to showcase some heroics (I smell a Republican behind this). This culminates in a film that celebrates the altruism of an upper-class, christian, white woman and neglects to truly address the poverty Michael and his community are buried in. The story is meant to be about basic human decency but its presentation misses the mark. That's not to say a lack of grittiness is the problem. It's problem exists in its lack sincere care and concern for Michael.
The film shares some similarities with another best picture nominee of the same year, Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire. They both contain stories of inner-city black kids that are victims of abuse and neglect who learn to value themselves through the love and support of others. The differences however are monumental, which gets to the core of the problem I have with The Blind Side. Precious takes on its issues of rape, abandonment, and hopelessness viscerally. The Blind Side only uses its issues of drug abuse, parental abandonment, homelessness, racism, and gang influence, to give Leigh Anne opportunities to showcase what a sassy, gold-hearted firebrand she is. Everyone she confronts (an ineffective coach, snobby and racist "friends", a gun toting drug dealer with posse) cower to her fiery retorts. The pattern just repeats itself until Michael is in the NFL and the credits roll.
The relationship between Leigh Anne and Michael is intended to be bound by bonds of compassion and familial love. But the film itself creates a world distinctly divided by lines of race and class. The only black characters in the film given any time to speak other than Michael are drug dealers, drug addicts, and an overzealous NCAA investigator who treats Michael like a possible terror suspect because he might have been manipulated into his college scholarship choice. White people tended to fall in two groups: Michael supporters (decent people) and Michael haters (ignorant, dismissive assholes). The film has the advantage of knowing Michael will succeed by the end, making anyone who doubts Leigh Anne or Michael a terrible person. The film goes through the motions of its genre, adding in several absurd scenes of heightened drama: a car accident to showcase how protective Michael inherently is (perfect for an offensive lineman!), and a confrontation with a drug dealer that would have played out similarly had Steven Seagal walked in.
I wouldn't have been compelled to write about The Blind Side if it hadn't received a best picture nomination, or if Sandra Bullock didn't win best actress; or if its domestic release didn't mark "the first time a movie marketed with a sole actresses' name above the title (Bullock) has crossed the $200 million mark," as wikipedia informed me. The movie is sold as a feel good experience. Simple and sweet. I walk away feeling condescended to. Two hours of easily navigated conflicts with a protagonist who after an hour and a half of performing nothing but selfless acts turns to her husband and asks, "Am I a good person?" Hollywood has repackaged and sold this story for decades and yet it still manages to make nearly $250 million dollars in its theatrical run alone. For those who were fortunate enough to have stumbled into this blog, and were curious enough to read on, you might have reasonably concluded that writing about The Blind Side now, if anything, will prolong the decline of the film simply by bringing it up. After all, what better than the passage of time to prove how truly inconsequential a bad, or even good, movie is despite its accolades and box office receipts. If there is any point to addressing The Blind Side it's because it got touted as one of the best movies of 2009 by the Academy of Motion Pictures, and I have an aversion to bullshit. Let it go down in history.
