STUDIO: Abramorama
STARRING: Erik Weihenmayer, Sabriye Tenberken
RELEASE DATE: April 11, 2008
DIRECTED BY: Lucy Walker
GENRE: Documentary
RATING: PG

Next time you think you have a mountain to climb in your daily life, consider the story of Erik Weihenmayer. Not only did he climb Mount Everest, something that has killed hundreds of people, but he's completely blind. Just watching Erik train with other climbers and move slowly up a mountain will make you question everything you've ever considered an accomplishment in your own life. He's a blind mountain-climber! What have you done lately?! His story alone would make for an interesting documentary, but Blindsight has a much more challenging story to tell. Understandably, Erik's legendary ascent made its way around the world, on magazine covers and in newspaper articles, and it inspired thousands of people, including a school of blind children in Tibet called Braille Without Borders. After their incredible founder - a fascinating woman worthy of a documentary of her very own named Sabriye Tenberken, who, blind herself, traveled from Germany to Tibet to open the school - contacted Erik, he got together a team of climbers and six of the blind Tibetan children to climb a peak nearly as high as Everest. The best distributed documentary of the year so far, Blindsight, chronicles the unpredictable highs and lows of their ascent.

The six Tibetan children - Kyila, Sonam Bhumtso, Tashi, Gyenshen, Dachung, and Tenzin - are like the kids of Spellbound or the hero of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters in that they're incredibly easy to root for. Director Lucy Walker very lightly paints each of their backgrounds, giving us glimpses of their family lives and some of their horrible back stories. Being blind in Tibet is an awful existence, where the affliction is seen as karmic proof of bad behavior in a past life and leads to widespread shunning and abuse. And, as such, many of these poor kids were horribly abused or abandoned just because of their vision problems. The fact that they can still smile, laugh, and sing, much less strive to accomplish something as amazing as climbing a 23,000 foot peak like Lhakpa Ri, is as inspiring as anything you'll see on film this year. Their life at sea level is almost undeniably harder than yours, and they're still willing to climb higher and higher. Think about that the next time you scream at your TiVo for cutting off the last 2 minutes of Lost.

Blindsight could have been just an inspirational documentary, but it becomes so much more than that because Walker allows the understandable questions surrounding the admittedly perilous journey to be respectfully addressed just as much as she focuses on the rah-rah heroism of the general story. The film could have easily been a two-hour cheering session for these wonderful kids, but several of the guides, and even the teachers from Braille Without Borders, aren’t afraid to ask the logical questions - Is this a good idea? How far do you go to support the idea that there are no mountains too high to climb when it's putting children in danger? Does the title perhaps refer to the adults pushing these kids past the point of safety? As the kids get higher and higher up Lhakpa Ri, guides fight over whether or not they should go on, and neither side is presented as the "right one." Walker wisely lets the audience make up their own mind. Honestly, Blindsight makes for a fascinating cinematic Rorschach test. Personally, I was so nervous about their safety that I wanted them to turn back at every frame of the film, but I'm positive that people in the same screening room wanted them to press on and reach the peak. Walker's allowance of not just questioning but even judging a few of the decisions made along the way is what makes Blindsight so brilliant.

If there's a flaw in Blindsight, it's in the editing. Walker and her team cut back and forth between the climb and some of the children’s back stories, and I wished the story had been told chronologically. Perhaps the mountain-side drama would have been too intense and Walker felt the need to get off the peak every once in a while, but there are kids that the audience is just learning about near the end of the movie. It would have been smarter to make all of the team recognizable faces before they started the ascent. But it's a minor complaint. Like Kong, Spellbound, and the other great docs of recent years, Blindsight is the kind of documentary that makes you want to know more as soon as it ends. You want to know what these people who you just spent two hours with are doing today. And you take them with you as you leave the theater, knowing that your bad day probably isn't as rough as you first thought and inspiring the realization that anyone can climb the peaks of their own lives. It's a must-see.