nan | 楠木

John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side is a mostly faithful adaptation of the book by Michael Lewis (one of my favorite authors). It tells the larger than life story of Michael Oher, a (super)naturally gifted athletic talent from the ghettos of Memphis, who was taken in by the affluent Tuohy family and given the chance to let his talent develop.

While Lewis’s book explores a range of topics (including racism, poverty and the college sports recruiting system, among others), the film mostly focuses on the human side of the story – the immense amount of love Oher received from his new family and the people around him. There are occasional (and successful) jabs at racism and other topics, but the film does not try to go into as much depth as the book. This is a necessary trade-off – there’s a lot of ground to cover in Michael’s story – but it also makes the film fall somewhat short. Most critically, the biggest moral of the book – how opportunity can change a person’s life forever, and therefore equal opportunity should be a founding principle of society – is portrayed but not effectively fleshed out, and arguably drowned in the feel-good mood of the film towards the finale. Michael’s success should be celebrated, no doubt; but there is much to ponder – how many other Michaels are not as lucky as he is, and end up living a life of poverty? And is there anything we could do about this?

8/10