Icarus Films will be teaming the KimStim Collection on Dec.
8 for the domestic DVD debut of Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt’s Blind.
After delivering a pair of award-winning scripts — Reprise
(2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011) — Vogt has taken his latest
creation and elected himself as the director.
In the process, he has delivered not only another excellent screenplay
(very offbeat), but his direction is sure and surprisingly mature for a first
effort.
At the center of his story is Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen
— King
of Devil’s Island, Trouble Water, Into the Dark, etc.), a
thirty-something writer, living in Oslo, married and faced with a life-changing
condition. She’s recently lost her
sight (hence the title).
Let’s be honest, that doesn’t sound like much a starting
point for a film — a blind woman wanders around her apartment while her
marriage falls apart.
But Vogt has many twists and turns and surprises in store
for us in his clever narrative and the equally clever cinematic presentation
(sound and cinematography as storytelling elements). We hear Ingrid’s mind at work as she
struggles with her condition and the tricks her active mind is capable of
playing on her … and us as the story unfolds.
Indeed, we learn early on that two of the main characters in
her world, Elin (Vera Vitali), her neighbor, a single-mom caught up in a joint
custody battle, and Einar (Marius Kolbenstvedt), a deviant with an addiction to
porn, are of her own creation. They are
real to us, but fictions created in her mind.
They serve a purpose that becomes
clear(er) as the story unfolds.
Her husband, Morten (Henrik Rafaelsen), is real, but as
things progress we can never really be sure if he is there — spying on her — or
off to work. And when he’s there,
making noise and moving around, we can’t really be sure if Ingrid is
manufacturing his presence in her mind.
Blind deals with being blind — a world of physical limitations
— but also with loneliness, coping with despair and trying to adapt to a world
that is not of one’s making.
Blind is presented in Norwegian with English subtitles.
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