One of the things that I love about being in my hometown is that it’s a good time for me to go to the movies. I don’t go out to movies all that often when I’m in San Francisco. This is due mostly to the cost of seeing a full-priced movie there (actual cost plus transportation cost etc.) compared to hitting the matinee with my mom in Tucson. It’s also due to the fact that there are so many other cheap/free/similarly-priced events and activities to enjoy in San Francisco so it seems like a waste to spend that time and money on a mainstream movie. And I suppose it’s due a bit to the fact that I don’t ever find it all that easy to find a friend in San Francisco who also wants to spend the time and money on the same mainstream movie that I do. So going to the movies is something I don’t do much anymore but still love to do when I’m back with my family.
I wouldn’t say that we typically see the smartest movies although some of the ones that we go watch are certainly smart. I’m just as happy to see a dumb chick flick with my mom and sister as to see the latest smart indie film. It’s more about the experience and the time spent together than the film itself. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting much from Blind Side which we went to go see this morning. All I really expected was that it would be a decent story with decent actors and that we’d have a good time together just hanging out at the theatre. We did have a good time together but Blind Side ended up being better than I’d expected it to be.
For those who don’t know, the movie is based on a book which is based on the true story of a teenager who grew up in the ghetto and ended up homeless when he’s taken in by a rich white family. The story is fairly predictable … they become his family, they help him with school, he ends up succeeding and gets a football scholarship. It’s a pretty straightforward story line.
However there were definitely some smart things about it that I liked. The main thing was that the movie depicts the fact that these rich white Republicans have some self-doubt as to their own motivations for taking this kid in. They wonder if they’re doing the right thing and if they’re doing it for the right reasons. Are they just getting a feel-good kick out of helping someone out? Are they pushing their own expectations on to him? Although the movie doesn’t delve deeply into these feelings, it poses the questions and acknowledges the fact that this is an issue that people in their position would have to deal with internally. Although I think that we often see characters in films having to deal with this issue externally (which we see here as well when the mother’s friends question her choice and consider it a charity act) we see it less often in terms of how people themselves question their own motives. It’s a smart twist even if it’s not explored in depth.
There were certainly some aspects of the storyline that I wondered about. The movie depicts this seventeen-year-old kid just naturally fitting in fairly well with this new family. I find it difficult to believe that the transition into a family was easy for him at that point. Based on my own experience working with foster children, there’s just a lot of wariness and a period of adapting that we don’t see in the film. In that way, I don’t think that the film revealed enough about the issues that the characters must have dealt with. So it falls short of what my full expectations would be if I were going to write the film but it exceeded the expectations that I had of it as a mainstream movie.
Mostly I guess I the movie captured my attention less for what it showed than what it didn’t show. It got my curious about the life of Michael Oher and how it all really played out for him as compared to what the movie depicted. I am particularly interested in learning more about how college went for him, how difficult it was to adjust to leaving his new family as soon as they’d adopted him and how hard the transition was to living on his own on a college campus. I am curious about the politics behind the NCAA investigation of his choice to attend the alma mater of his new foster parents – why did the NCAA do this and what other cases similar to this have there been. The movie interested me because it left this questions open which makes me inclined to do more research into the topic now that I’ve left the theater.
Is Blind Side worth seeing? I probably wouldn’t have bothered in San Francisco but I’m glad that I saw it while back at home. If you saw it, I’d love to know what you thought about it! Leave it in the comments.
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Tags: blind side, diary of a smart chick, entertainment, films, movies
