Review – The Blind Side
I knew the material that is the source of The Blind Side since I had quickly consumed the Michael Lewis book when it was released. I was late to the cult of Moneyball and had caught up with his work. The thing about The Blind Side was that it was fascinating on some levels and completely unfocused in others. It kinda wanted to be the football version of Moneyball, thus the subtitle “Evolution of a Game.”
On the other hand, it was very much about Michael Oher, whose future was a question mark at the time of publication. While imagining Oher via Lewis’ vivid writing was interesting, as a character, Oher was no Billy Beane. He was acted upon as much as he acted.
So whoever developed The Blind Side was very smart to shift the focus to Leigh Anne Touhy, the woman who took Oher in and was the driving force in turning his physical gifts into a future as an athlete.
After that choice, the next big challenge was to make a movie that didn’t make your teeth rot from sugar as you watched. No mean feat.
The film is the Anti-Precious… giant black kid, living on the margins, finds the support of a female angel…
SPOILERS… IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT THE STORY OF PRECIOUS OR THE BLIND SIDE…
…and thrives under her… except this time, the kid’s “happy ending” isn’t getting AIDS, two children he can’t support (including a special needs kid), or an unlikely-to-be-happy future.
This kid turns out to actually be smart enough to do reasonably well in a religious day school, his size was a singular asset, and he learned the game well enough to be valued by all the wealthy white men and women who would have otherwise locked their doors if they stopped at a light and saw Oher or any of his childhood friends on the corner.
Not only that, he would go on to be a premiere player at the college level, be drafted by the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens in the first round, making him an instant millionaire, and is starting for the Ravens in his rookie year.
END “SPOILERS”
This is a movie that really does make you feel good. And not just because of racial guilt.
Sandra Bullock is terrific here, but the secret weapon of this film is Quinton Aaron, who has to give a nearly silent performance through about 2/3rds of the film before speaking up a little more. So we have to get his whole performance through his eyes and body language. And it is a remarkable and easy to undervalue performance.
His role will surely be derided by some, in much the way Michael Clarke Duncan’s Oscar-nominated turn in The Green Mile was. But again, breaking the stereotype of the large, quiet black man who is angelic in some way – The Magic Negro, as some call it – Aaron’s turn as Oher is a bit more sophisticated. He is a gentle giant, not because he is stupid or mentally challenged, but because it is in his nature and he chooses, against logic on some level, to remain kind even at the expense of his own comfort.
And John Lee Hancock, who wrote and directed the film, doesn’t milk it mercilessly. When Oher is sleeping in the gym at night because he has nowhere else to go, we don’t see him laying there, alone in the dark with rats crawling around, with Oher eating the left over end of Snickers bars. Hancock gives the audience enough clues about what is happening, but when Leigh Anne figures it out, it is the first time we have it on record. And the last thing that would befit Oher’s character would be him complaining about it in any way.
It’s odd, but if I had to say that this movie reminded me of another, I would probably cite Fried Green Tomatoes. There is something old fashioned about this film
Well, the spoiler tag would have been nice after the one containing them for Precious.
Or “before.” Ugh.
Like I’ve said: Hancock is an ace with this sort of feel-good, real-life sports story. Here, as in The Rookie, he doesn’t push too hard, and he respects the intelligence of his audience. I would be shocked, but I wouldn’t be surprised, if this one winds up in the Best Picture top ten. Really.
Good point, Josh… sorry… Precious is a year old for me, so I forget that its story is still a mystery to some… have fixed…
To be completely reductive about it, “Precious” is to Obama (and Obama boosters) what “The Blind Side” is to Palin (and Palin boosters).
That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the film, especially after it was clobbered to death by all of the “smart” critics.
Joe is right about Hancock (huge “Perfect World” fan here btw) not pushing the more obvious points of the story and hitting us over the head with the Touhy’s do-goodisms.
Would I have liked/respected it more if Oher had been portrayed as something more than a silent, saintly, gentle African-American giant and been granted a tad more dimension/humanity? Sure, but the film works in a classy tearjerker way just the same. $200-million isn’t out of reach after that opening, and WOM should be spectacular.
Ironic, though, that “Precious” will be the recipient of the Stanley Kramer prize rather than “Blind Side” which is precisely the type of movie that Kramer himself would be making today if he were still alive–and actually learned a thing or two about making movies (“R.P.M.,” “The Domino Principle” anyone??)
And as good as Bullock is, Tim McGraw does really nice, understated work here. While he’s likely to be the film’s forgotten man, I’d love to see him get the type of boost (albeit on a smaller scale, of course) that Josh Brolin got off of “No Country for Old Men.” That is, if McGraw is even interested in taking on more than the occasional acting role.
Toby Keith, eat your heart out.
Tim McGraw also was very good as a very different character in Saturday Night Lights.
There’s a “Saturday Night Lights” too?
Since it is Sandra Bullock’s Leigh Ann who enters Michael Oher’s life and benevolently pushes him towards his goal/fate; wouldn’t that make this more a ‘magic caucasian’ movie, like Dangerous Minds and Finding Forrester?
Er, Friday Night Lights — the movie, not the TV series. That’s what I get for posting while sampling Beaujolais Nouveau.
so what’s with the blatent, zero-thought blindness of some critics with this movie. Specifically thinking about the Village Voice jackass that gave Blind Side a Zero. Why the agenda against this movie? (it’s actions like this, that confirm, in the minds of rightests and christianists, that the media is out to get them and wants to eradicate all goodness from the world).
Movielocke: If you’re asking whether some of my liberal brethren are going a little bit batshit over this movie — well, you’re right. Alas. And remember: This is coming from someone who voted for Obama and McGovern.
David, I’m a big fan of your commentary on both the business and on the way the business is covered; but you completely miss the fundamental problems with The Blind Side.
Leigh Anne Touhy wasn’t the driving force behind Michael Oher becoming a football star. Michael Oher was. The Touhys were incredibly selfless and generous in taking Michael into their home and raising him as a part of their family. But Michael did the work on the field to maximize his talents and in the classroom, compensating for his remedial, public school education by busting his ass in order to catch up to his peers.
Your comment encapsulates the fundamental problem with this film and so many like it — it becomes a story about the angelic white person / family who saves the poor minority without ever acknowledging the work that minority has to do in order to be “saved”. The Touhys helped put Michael Oher in a position to succeed, but as a great football coach once said, “the players have to make the plays.” Michael made the plays, not Leigh Anne.
Obviously, it’s easier for Warners to turn the story of an under-privileged African-American into a movie about a generous, rich white woman than it would be for them to make a movie about Michael Oher. They know there’s an existing audience for Sandra Bullock movies and they’re not sure who would go see the other version. But as someone who seems like a smart viewer and reader of cinema, I’m disappointed that you in no way seem aware of how offensive that premise is to all of us who would actually see that other version. It’s 2009. We have a bi-racial President; yet Hollywood still thinks it’s necessary to turn the story of a 300 lb. African-American football player into a vehicle for Sandra Bullock.
You don’t see a problem with that?
ArdenScribe: I can understand where you’re coming from, but you do realize that if someone made a movie about the youth of that biracial president, it would be the story of a young man who, between fifth grade and his senior year of high school, was raised by his white grandparents, right?
Welcome, Arden.
No. Actually not.
(OOPS… I didn’t mean to say that you were not actually welcome, but that I disagreed with your closing question. And then I read it back… and now iI am using the power of being able to go into my comment to clarify…)
As I wrote, a great deal of what I liked about this film is Oher and specifically, the performance of Oher by Quinton Aaron. He is much more of a cipher in the non-fiction book.
Your bias against this film – which I am guess that the Village Voice, as someone noted above, shares – is much like the bias you claim it has.
Of course, Michael makes the plays. No one, including me or the movie, suggests otherwise. What the movie does suggest, like the book, is that Oher would never have been in the position to exploit his talent/been exploited without this woman.
The movie doesn’t avoid the question of whether Touhy had ulterior movies to exploit this physical specimen, though it does seem to conclude that she did not.
This is, I think, the Precious vs The Blind Side issue. For me – and you are certainly welcome to disagree – The Blind Side is more honest about race than Precious because it is not pretending not to be a movie.
If you read the book and can think of a way into Oher without making a lot up out of whole cloth, I’d be fascinated to hear what movie you think that is. Because Michael Lewis wrote about a silent giant.
What I hear when I read what you are arguing is that Hollywood can do no right… “they” have to make race shallow and obvious because that is just what “they” do.
And I don’t know what your personal position on Precious is, but I think many feel that because a black lesbian’s book inspired a gay black man to make a movie loaded with brutality that is must be “real.”
I would like to see the movie that understands what Precious’ future really would be in that situation. I would respect that movie more. I might even, depending on how it did it, see it as important art.
I do not see The Blind Side as important art… just as a traditional feel-good family film that does not patronize or steal the power from the black man at the center of the tale.
If you know something specific about the evolution of this project – and I have no idea whether you read the book or even saw the movie – I would be interested in that. You seem to assume a lot, but maybe you do know. Maybe there was an idea for the book that you would prefer and someone was interested in making before WB swooped in and made “Miss Congeniality Meets A Black Boy,” which seems to be your take on this film.
And just as aside… I am easily offended by what I see as hidden racism in studio films. I still get angry about The Last Samurai and even Glory, in which a person who I quite like and respect, Ed Zwick, I think took a wrong turn and ended up patronizing blacks and Japanese instead of being their supporter, as I think he intended in the work. If I thought there was a great movie driven by Michael Oher and they junked that for the Bullock movie, I might agree with you. But I think there was no movie there without the focus shifting.
Moreover, I think that as with many great films, seeing the movie from a perspective other than the person who we think is the “main character” can work and can often do a better job of illuminating the subject than a direct approach. Sometimes you get Me & Orson Welles. But sometimes, working a different angle is the only great angle.
Joe, is your point that Obama was raised by his white family or that the film would focus solely on that aspect of his upbringing? Because those are two fundamentally different issues. Is my original point genuinely that unclear, or are you trying to be provocative?
The fact that Oher and Obama were raised by white people is not the reason for their success. The Touhys made a major, life-changing contribution to Oher’s world. As I said, they helped put him in a position to succeed. But so did Oher’s coaches and tutors. And according to Oher himself, his African-American best friend (who knew him before he met the Touhys and is still a close advisor to him) was an equally important factor in him becoming the man he’s become.
The point is this: were race not an issue in this film, it would be impossible to argue that Leigh Anne Touhy’s story is the most interesting one. But in Hollywood, minorities only exist to enhance the stories of white characters; so the Michael Oher story is co-opted and becomes the Leigh Anne Touhy story.
I think David is a good reader of movies. I would expect him to pick up on this pretty obvious fact. I was disappointed that he didn’t mention it.
Arden… the truth is not always good drama.
And again, I don’t think that the movie suggests that Oher didn’t do the work himself. I pointed out that the main tutor, played by Kathy Bates, is a problem in the drama of the film… but there she is, Hancock clearly feeling the need to include her.
You repeat and clarify your position – “In Hollywood, minorities only exist to enhance the stories of white characters.”
And true a lot of the time.
I just don’t think that is the case here.
I can tell you that my emotions while watching this film were rarely about Touhy’s journey, but about this young man’s. It was him overcoming that got to me. It was him finding his full range of gifts, beyond being large. It was his honor and loyalty, which loomed large against a rich, white family of fast food chain owners. He teaches Touhy that her idea of a challenge is nothing compared to what he has gotten past in a challenging life.
But that’s just how I saw it…
I know the truth doesn’t inherently make great drama (I’m a screenwriter). But I read The Blind Side and I know a little bit about Michael Oher. His story is amazing and in light of the fact that Precious – a fictional story about a down-and-out African-American character – is getting an absurd amount of Oscar buzz, I find it disheartening that this true story of a once down-and-out African-American who actually did overcome, couldn’t be told from the perspective of its most interesting character.
That’s not to say that the movie as constructed isn’t good. And it’s not to say that there’s no merit to telling Leigh Anne’s story. But the choice to focus on her was not dictated by drama.
As a fan and a working member of this industry, I think it’s sad that in 2009 the studios still see stories like this as a means of exploring white liberal guilt. As an industry and an audience, we should be past that. But based on the weekend numbers, it looks like Warners will be validated in its choice, so this discussion is essentially rendered moot, isn’t it?
In any case, thanks for your response. I very much enjoy reading your blog regardless of whether or not I agree with all of your interpretations.
And I didn’t mean for that to sound like a back-handed compliment. I really do enjoy your blog.
BTW: I really hope this doesn’t degenerate into an either/or, Blind Side vs. Precious thing. Because some of us find much to admire in both movies.
Oops. David, I only saw the comment you wrote after my second post (which I wrote in response to Joe Leydon). I completely missed your first, and much more complete, comments above.
So sorry.
Vis a vis Precious, I don’t think it’s “real”. I have huge problems with both the film and the book, but I’ll reserve those for another comment. In any case, I don’t think it’s inherently a better movie than The Blind Side. I do prefer the fact that it was able to tell a story about an African-American character, but I don’t like the story it tells for lots of reasons.
My problem with TBS is this: there are very few stories that feature African-American characters that are able to gain the critical mass that The Blind Side (the book) was able to generate. To see one of those stories co-opted for a white character is disheartening. Couple that with the paucity of African-American characters on screen in general, and the absence of non-race-based African-American stories in particular, and this film seems like one in a long line of Hollywood slights (of which I would include both of the Zwick films you mentioned).
It’s fine to make feel-good holiday films. But is it really necessary to continue to use African-American gentle giants to do so?
I do know a bit about Michael Oher. Someone close to me was very close to signing him before he ultimately signed with Bus Cook (Brett Favre’s agent). I know he’s not the gentle giant Michael Lewis described — what NFL tackle is? And I know he has strong opinions about the book and the way he was portrayed. But none of that is relevant to the broader issue.
Now that I’ve read your initial post, I understand your perspective much more clearly.
Thanks.
Don’t forget to add “Blood Diamond” to the Ed Zwick ‘noble minority stories through the eyes of a white character’ list. I think both “B.D.” and “The Last Samurai” would have been better films
and cheaper to make if they had focused on Hounsou and Watanabe, respectively. Of course they wouldn’t have been big hits at the box office, so………
Thirteen years later, I’m still amazed Hollywood finally made a Medgar Evers movie – and it starred Alec Baldwin.
Oh, and thanks for the change, Dave.
Got to agree with Arden. The story is much less about Oher than Lee Ann and her family’s Christian duty to do the right thing to help him. It’s inspiring at times, but Oher’s struggle has been sanitized for the screen, and despite a great performance, he is treated as a secondary character.
From what’s been told about Oher on ESPN over the years…a great piece on him on MNF months ago…much of the drama in this movie simply is a complete fabrication, and that I have a major problem with.
I invite you all to read the REAL story of Michael Oher here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/magazine/24football.html?_r=2
I guess you can make an argument that leaving out major details about Michael’s murdered father and crackhead mother, and the actual struggles he had transitioning into Lee Ann’s family was done to make the story more straightforwardly crowd-pleasing.
Too bad that the true story the film is based upon is far more compelling than “The Blind Side.”
I am intrigued, Ethan…
I haven’t read the whole book in a few years, so I decided to read the piece you linked to in NYT.
So what, exactly, do you see as the “fabricated” drama of the film?
And were you paying attention, because the movie pays more attention to the dead father and the crackhead mother than this piece does.
What part of transitioning to Leigh Anne’s family is in the NYT piece and not in the movie?
I am kinda gobsmacked, as the NYT piece you link to reads almost like a synopsis of the movie.
Please be specific.
I agree that the Times piece doesn’t trace Oher’s personal history that much more than the movie. Sadly, no one seems to have plumbed the depths of his struggle, other than ESPN to my knowledge, which did a superior piece on Oher during Draft weekend this year, which was supposedly repeated prior to their MNF game against the Browns last week. I can’t find a link to it, (help anyone?) otherwise Id gladly advocate it before the Times article.
On the other hand, based on the Times article alone, there are major flaws with “The Blind Side.” Major characters such as Coach Freeze and Ms. Graves are altered/omitted. Leah Anne is a major figure admittedly; yes she insisted on taking in Oher, and there is an argument for her as Oher’s savior but other than that she is nearly a secondary character on par with Freeze and Graves in this 10 page story, and certainly not the star of the show. The NYT article and ESPN piece made it sound much much more like a team effort however than this movie portrays in regards to Oher’s advancement, and the fact that key characters like Freeze and Graves were omitted and altered is stunning and propogates charges of the movie as white guilt on display, even though I disagree.
Sean’s excuse that Michael had no interest in his own past can on the surface be explained as the basis for the lack of emphasis on Oher’s personal history in the movie, but it also reinforces “The Blind Side’s” role as superficial, crowd-pleasing entertainment. The fact that Oher later recounted his earlier life, pre Sean and Leah Anne, makes things even worse.
Also in the Times that is overlooked:
“In his first nine years of school, Michael Oher was enrolled in 11 different institutions, and that included a gap of 18 months, around age 10, when he apparently did not attend school….Michael Oher repeated first grade. He repeated second grade, too. And yet the school system presented these early years as the most accomplished of his academic career”
“The year before Simpson got his file, Michael Oher passed ninth grade at a high school called Westwood. According to his transcripts, he missed 50 days of school that year.”
I guess you can argue that overlooking aspects like this doesn’t fit with the film’s inspirational tone. At the same time, Oher’s attending of Briarcrest was illegal based on his previous academic performance, something that has been repeatedly raised in sports columns and shows from here to Timbuktoo, and this certainly doesn’t do anything to address the charges of Boosterism that plague Oher’s adoption and football career.
Critics who dislike the film have criticized the movie as the epitome of white guilt, whether or not the film is based on a true story. Yet Boosterism is the realistic issue in the story of Michael Oher, yet the film glances over Briarcrest’s illegal acceptance of Oher in the face of previous attendance and GPA statistics, unlike the Times article which (rightfully and successfully in my opinion, though many sports analysts have disagreed) confronts and defends the issue.
I’m a huge football fan, and this is an issue that has plagued Oher from his days on the pages of USA Today as a high school All-American, all the way to the draft. Im an Oher fan, but it seems like his backers want to try to overcome questions about him with a tidal wave of goodwill following a major Hollywood film, rather than confronting issues directly. For better or worse, it looks like they made the right choice.
Is this the ESPN story you mentioned?
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4099667
I will add that there is one thing in this film that counteracts the ongoing Booster issues; the pics in the End-Credits. However, that is it. There is no contradictory evidence to this movie’s tone that Oher would not have been “rescued” had it not been for his sheer phyisical size and prowess. And that again reinforces the white guilt argument.
This film refuses to confront ongoing questions legitimate and in some cases legal questions as to whether Oher would have been taken in had it not been due to his ability to boost the football program of Leigh Anne’s alma mater.
“Is this the ESPN story you mentioned?
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4099667“
Haha partly….Draft Day in the NFL is a 2 day+ exercise, and Oher’s pre-draft status was endlessly debated with interview clips that delved far more deeply into his past and legit issues with boostering that dog many top NFL players, but Oher especially last year.
This post-draft piece is the equivalent of post-championship interviews with the likes of Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriquez and Kobe Bryant, if you know what I mean.
Sorry for the overposting, but I guess my (and many sports fans’) response to “Blind Side” boils down to these questions that I should have earlier encapsulated…
The Boosterism question:
1) Would Leah Anne and Sean’s family have taken in Michael Oher if he were 5 inches shorter and 50 pounds thinner? Sean supposedly looked after “poor black kids” for many YEARS, yet less than a week after he took note of Michael Oher, wife Leah Anne became heartbroken enough by his plight to take him in. Coincidence I guess. But given Leah Anne and Sean’s deep personal ties to Briarcrest before Michael Oher part of the reason they took Oher in was due to his massive physical stature (bigger than Shaq at the same age) to boost their alma mater and their own profiles…and given the fact Graves’s and Freeze’s roles in Oher’s development are wiped off the map in this movie, isn’t it even more legitimate? Apparently not, as questions along this line are dismissed as insulting…
The Racial Question:
2) Would “The Blind Side” have been made into a movie if Michael Oher was exactly the same, except white?
Asking the same question re: “Precious” would yield a different result in my opinion.
the worst moment in BLIND SIDE is that car accident scene … although I guess if you own every taco bell in TN then you can afford to buy new trucks for adopted kids every week …. I did dig the fact that there is a scene where the kids are reading Where The Wild Things Are …. WB sent out screeners of Blind Side, well, they should have sent screeners of The Box and Watchman instead
(Not just WTWTA- I believe the daughter, Collins, is also watching TWILIGHT when the Twohy family first comes home with Michael.)
You overlook, when you call the Twohy’s charity into question, that Michael’s development as an athlete, scholarship and entrance to Mississippi, and subsequent drafting by the Ravens was, regardless of any promise of his physical and mental abilities, no foregone conclusion.
In any case, the movie brings the gray area to light- were their motives entirely selfless? Probably not, but that doesn’t negate the opportunity that that community extended to him. And the movie clearly shows the community, and not just the Twohys, as his benefactors- the coaches, the teachers, the administrators, the tutor. Finally, in what is the biggest departure from the book, at least, Michael considers the path he could have taken. Unlike in the book, he is shown owning the decision for himself.
The book was terrific- a sports-based blend of class, economics, race, politics, education, religion, and geographic hot buttons -and the movie does alright by it.
The Blind Side outgrossed New Moon on Thanksgiving Day. Not entirely surprising, I must say.
While I really enjoyed ‘The Blind Side’, I think Susan Boyle’s story would make a really good underdog Hollywood movie. I mean…. TV Guide Network’s already airing a documentary about her on the 13th. I’m a huge Susan Boyle fan so i can’t wait. I heard it’ll only be playing on TV Guide Network…
How do you guys feel about Susan Boyle’s life being adapted into a feature? Anyone else going to watch the documentary?
TV Guide and documentary aren’t to used in the same sentence. It’s a bunch of talking heads and clips, cut together.
No one wants to see an underdog movie about a middle-aged woman who hits it big on a TV show, unless she’s incredibly hot, blind and walks away with Alec Baldwin.
It’s not likely that the Touhy family was scouting at-risk kids, looking for potential NFL players.
I tip my cap to any hard working people who try to help those in need, but this movie is far from EMOTIONAL when it does little more than affirm ubiquitous WHITE GUILT in America today. Mr. Oher is a much stronger and successful man by his own life choices. In this film, he is made to look like nothing more than an inaudible giant lug. In turn, Leigh Anne is made to be Christ-like in her resolve to get this kid’s life in order. In reality, the kid just fell in her family’s lap and they tried to help him! A film like this is great and dangerous all at the same time: it may lead more suburbanites to get involved in the inner-city; undoubtedly, it will promote the idea that black people can not succeed with out the help of white people (AND THE IDEA THAT BLACK PEOPLE CAN ONLY SUCCEED IN SPORTS)! Just be careful for what you take as FACE VALUE and when you are watching a film, ask yourself, “How is this film portraying the images of class, race, and gender and why?”
I tip my cap to any hard working people who try to help those in need, but this movie is far from EMOTIONAL when it does little more than affirm ubiquitous WHITE GUILT in America today. Mr. Oher is a much stronger and successful man by his own life choices. In this film, he is made to look like nothing more than an inaudible giant lug. In turn, Leigh Anne is made to be Christ-like in her resolve to get this kid’s life in order. In reality, the kid just fell in her family’s lap and they tried to help him! A film like this is great and dangerous all at the same time: it may lead more suburbanites to get involved in the inner-city; undoubtedly, it will promote the idea that black people can not succeed with out the help of white people (AND THE IDEA THAT BLACK PEOPLE CAN ONLY SUCCEED IN SPORTS)!