SFF NOTES: Notes on Blindness (2016, Dirs. James Spinney, Peter Middleton)

You'd think a theologian losing his sight would be a perfect time to nuzzle deeper into the bosom of the Lord. Or perhaps to have a showdown with Him/Her over the loss. But this is not the case (at least not initially) with John Hull, who documented his late onset blindness on a comprehensive library of cassette tapes. These recordings have in turn provided the soundtrack for James Spinney and Peter Middleton's perceptive recreation of Hull’s sometimes practical, sometimes philosophical observations, Notes on Blindness.

Hull's observations, at least as curated here, focus heavily on connection. Ethereal family relationships, fading visual memories, and the emerging gulf of shared experience are repeatedly turned over, with Hull’s emotionally intimate voiceovers warming and horrifying in equal measure. Hull’s trippingly self-effacing voice is dubbed into the performance of Dan Renton Skinner, who subtly embodies the theologian’s increasingly retracted physicality and his growing sense of uselessness.

Notes on Blindness isn’t as bleak as it may appear on paper. Hull’s diaries have an appealing conversational tone and much of the time is given over to reminiscing with his wife Marilyn (played by Simone Kirby) and their quite humour is quite infectious. Their quiet conversations lend the film an embracing familiarity, which is bolstered by the film’s deep, comforting interiors.

In its design and its impressive use of soundscapes, Spinney and Middleton’s film shares a bond with the recent Edwyn Collins documentary, The Possibilities Are Endless, which also picked up on a non-traditional subject and gave it a meaningfully sensory exploration. The deeper Hull goes into his own personal darkness here, the more heightened Spinney and Middleton’s abstraction becomes. They provide some remarkable visuals matched to the thunderous soundtrack, eventually lifting the film to the rapturous experience that mirrors Hull's own.

A moving step into a rarely explored frontier, travelled with sensitivity and understated insight.

★★★☆

Trailer:

Notes on Blindness screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.