Notes on Blindness

seen on 18 July 2016

This film, directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney, documents theologian John Hull's coming to terms with his encroaching blindness in the early 1980s. The directors have used the cassette tapes Professor Hull made at the time, together with recordings of his wife, children and parents, as the basis of all the speech in the film, with actors lip-synching both the conversations (mainly between husband and wife) and Hull's intense analysis of his predicament. Dan Skinner takes the part of John Hull, while Simone Kirby plays Marilyn Hull.

The result is far more of a documentary than a biopic. There are no anguished consultations with doctors and no 'big scenes' of conflict and resolution. Instead, everything revolves around the measured tones of John Hull himself as he analyses and ruminates upon the onset of total blindness in his mid-forties (he had problems with his eyes since adolescence). A severe crisis of confidence one Christmas seems all the more acute amidst the general sense of calm, while a family trip to Australia to visit his parents reveals a poignant inability to connect with the childhood he had left behind. The conversations with his eldest son and second child Thomas are artless and utterly unsentimental, and yet quietly probing as the young child becomes aware of his father's blindness.

The film is constructed almost entirely from John's perspective, often with very subdued lighting in the foreground and a subtle but powerful emphasis on the tactile and aural world which must replace his reliance on the visual. (The mechanics of creating cassette recordings are a great boon here as the clicking of the buttons and the sounds of a tape spooling are often prominent.) There are marvellous scenes in which the hissing of wind or the falling of rain assume a central importance. 

The two main actors give beautifully understated performances; Dan Skinner's face is usually still and its expression hard to read, forcing us to pay attention to the words even more closely than usual, while Simone Kirby exudes a sense of fortitude and deep love. The final scene in which John tells Marilyn about a sense of God's grace is compelling both because John relates it in the slightly hesitant but always precise tones that we have become used to, and also because the couple can laugh affectionately at the telling. This provides a deeply moving conclusion to a remarkable film.