Deixa-me rir...

"Caros Audiophiles, I feel a need to introduce a wonderfully captivating film that I watched this week during the London Film Festival.

"Imagine", by the Polish writer/director Andrzej Jakimowski, is located em Lisboa. The story concerns a clinical Institute for recently blind people, mostly children, situated in the middle of the city but protected from the outside world by high walls. Into this world arrives a young charismatic Englishman named Ian. He has been recommended to the clinic's director to teach the patients how to manage and overcome their blindness.

Ian is also blind, but he refuses to use a walking stick, because he does not want the world to treat him differently. Instead he uses a technique of 'echo-location', a kind of personal sonar, by clicking his tongue or his fingers, in order to locate solid objects or to navigate around dangers. His scars and bruises is evidence to our seeing eyes that he is not always successful. The clinic director is sceptical and worried about the safety of the children under his responsibility.

However, the children quickly gain self-confidence through Ian's demonstrations, teaching them by examples how to use their remaining four senses, but especially sound, to understand the textures of the world around them. The different sounds of shoes. The sounds of water - the children try to fill a glass with water from a carafe, without spilling or overfilling the glass. It seems such a simple task but we discover that a blind person must re-learn spatial awareness. This is difficult.

His central idea is that if you can imagine the landscape around you, then the landscape and objects will talk to you.

A blind adult woman, Eva, is also staying at the clinic. One day she accompanies Ian into the city. She is frightened but follows by keeping a hand on his shoulder. They walk the narrow cobbled pavements, they cross streets busy with cars and tram electrico 28, and they arrive at a small cafe. They sit and order coffee, just like any normal couple. At first no-one realises that Ian and Eva are blind. For her this feels so liberating. Ian then describes the scene around the cafe, and helps Eva to sense the objects and happenings nearby.

We, the seeing audience, cannot see what he is describing. The camera does not show us. We are like Eva, we must trust Ian, and try to feel our way.

On another day, Eva decides to try to find the cafe without the help of Ian. She is accompanied by a teenage boy who escapes the clinic without permission. Together they manage to find the same cafe. They speak with the patron who remembers Eva. She feels a great sense of achievement. But then an innocent comment makes Eva begin to question and suspect Ian's honesty - it seems that some of the scenery which Ian had described does not exist. Can it be that Ian had only described his imagination?

Eva and the boy are horrified. They return to the Institute and tell the other children. They challenge Ian with his apparent deception. He does not deny, sometimes he is wrong, but he tells them that many times people who can see do not see what is around them. That through imagination it is possible to see more than most people can see with their eyes.The teenage boy challenges Ian to prove this.

And so that evening Ian takes the boy into the city on an adventure to discover if he was describing the truth or not. We follow, like the blind boy, not seeing, but trying to sense what Ian is describing along the journey. Sometimes the camera shows us the potential dangers in front of them, and we pray that they avoid these dangers. It is more thriling and suspenseful than many 'thrillers'.

Only at the end of the film do we discover how much was truth and how much imagination. And does it always matter, if the result can be a greater awareness and understanding of the world around us? Blind people can sense things that we others do not, maybe cannot.

In this way "Imagine" tries to communicate blindness from within, instead of observing as an outsider. With tender empathy the film begins to capture what all of us who can see usually take for granted. It is moving and magical.

Hopefully "Imagine" will find a distributor for the film to be shown widely in other countries. It was received ecstatically here at the London premiere so the signs are encouraging. Since the film is located in Lisbon, with luck you will have the opportnity to watch it sometime...

In the meantime, here is the official trailer:

To compliment this film, I was trying to think of some appropriate music. Songs about blindness seem a bit obvious, a bit cheesy. Anyway I could not think of a good one. But since this a Lisbon setting, I am reminded of the Wim Wenders 1995 film "Lisbon Story/Viagem a Lisboa". I thought this film was rather boring, but it was accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack cd"Ainda" by Madredeus:

A proxima.

PO