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Notes on Blindness
After losing sight in 1983, John Hull began keeping an audio diary, a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating the interior world of blindness. Following on from the Emmy Award-winning short film of the same name, Notes on Blindness is an ambitious and groundbreaking work, both affecting and innovative.
Release : | 2016 |
Rating : | 7 |
Studio : | ARTE, Cinephil, Impact Partners, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Other, |
Cast : | John M. Hull Marilyn Hull Daniel Renton Skinner Simone Kirby Eileen Davies |
Genre : | Drama Documentary |
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Reviews
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
This is such an amazing piece of work; put in the shoes of someone who loses his sight, halfway through his lifetime, which is one of my personal worst nightmares, I was in tears throughout most of this film. Sight is so essential to my every being, I cannot describe how awful it felt to me, to put myself in the shoes of someone losing perhaps the most important sense of all. It was absolutely devastating to be brought along this journey into nothingness with this film. And yet, as John puts it, it's still a gift bestowed upon him, just like this film is. The whole is so beautifully, atmospherically put together. The cinematography matches the subject so incredibly well, it works with how you could possibly show a person's story who can't see. For a person to overcome this disability, to make the most of it, to thrive on it, despite relying on all senses but his sight, is so amazingly inspirational. I found myself challenging myself to experience my senses, other than my sight more fully. I walked around my house with my eyes shut, I stood outside listening to the rain falling, I familiarised myself to my surroundings. No film to date has ever had this effect on me.
Every once in a while a film is made that captures an experience many of us will never encounter, but are richer for learning about said experience. John Hull's academic approach to life has provided a prolific archive of sound recordings documenting his experience with his blindness. Directors/ Writers Middleton and Spinney have provided a cinematic experience of blindness for the seeing. This poetic and inspiring film introduces the world to a remarkably bright, sensitive and expressive human being.
This is a semi-dramatized documentary focusing on retelling the audio memoirs of a man going blind. If that sounds slightly unusual, it's because it is. The cast lip sync the actual recorded words spoken by John Hull and his wife who detailed his descent into the debilitating world of visual impairment in the 1980s.The memoirs capture the pure physical and psychological turmoil experienced by John as he experiences this loss of vision, and as he says he battles to live in reality instead of this nostalgic world that his brain is forcing upon him. The dreams he experiences and the way he describes them are beautiful bittersweet torture - as it is his only way of conjuring new images into his world, yet he wakes every morning crestfallen, as he remembers he cannot see, and they were just dreams. One night he dreams he can see his new child that was born after he lost his sight. The way this scene is directed (by Peter Middleton & James Spinney) is as magical as it is emotive.John expresses to us that he believes part of his brain is dying as a portion of it no longer requires power to process images. He says he feels hungry for stimulation that he just cannot obtain. He also forgets what his wife looks like, which must be pure agony. The frustration of being rendered effectively useless as a parent also weighs heavily on his mind, and some points on the audio tapes you can almost feel the depression that John must be battling.Dan Renton Skinner does an unbelievable job as the taunted John Hull. His facial expressions transport us into this hell that John must have been in and his performance is one of the most captivating of any portraying an illness / disability that I can remember.I couldn't wait to splash down a few words about this film in the hope that just 1 or 2 people watch it as a result. That has to be a sign that of its' quality.Beautiful agony
I want to shower praise on the director, actors and everyone involved in this film. But this magnificent meditation exceeds the sum of its parts. If you tackle your life head on. If you question the relationship between your senses and your awareness and, indeed, what that might imply about what you are. If you appreciate the right amount of silence, and delicate, subtle cinematography. If you are moved by music that infuses the narrative with a thoughtful atmosphere. If you respect originality of technique in an industry that is struggling with habit. If all of these and then that ineffable magic of something greater, then please, experience this.