Blind (2014) - Vogt's artistic debut about blindness makes its audience confused and depressed

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Lead Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Thelma (2017)) exhibits her naked backside on the poster for Eskil Vogt's Blind

A blind woman remembers her boyfriend, when he is away from her, and when he is there, she feels far away from him. Another lonely woman misses her son, when he is not with her, and she seeks a new human connection.

Blind is the feature directing debut for writer-director Eskil Vogt (Oslo, August 31st/Oslo, 31. August (2011), co-writer). It is a depressing Norwegian drama, in which characters are lonely, awkward, disloyal SPOILER and, - as if to make matters worse, - the woman with the son also suddenly and inexplicably becomes blind. The introverted male character guides us thoroughly through his masturbation and porn habits. - But what for? Besides it possibly adding a tangent to the general, grey picture of depressing adult life in Norway, which is projected in Blind.
The blindness that the film deals with certainly makes it more uncomfortable, because audiences unavoidably imagine themselves put in the horrific situation of losing one's vision, and the inevitable everyday results of the handicap: The spots that would go unnoticed, the things we would be walking into; the secrets that might evolve due to our defect, and the distance to the surrounding world. Blind cultivates these issues and in doing so leaves the one-sided impression that life with blindness is only sad, lonely and miserable. The artistic strokes of Vogt's film don't save it from being uncompelling and depressing.

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Vogt gave en interview at the London Film Festival about Blind that you can watch here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown (likely at least a huge flop)
[Blind premiered 17 January (Sundance) and runs 96 minutes. Shooting took place in Oslo, Norway. The film won festival and some critical acclaim but has no box office performances released and is likely to have made very little money and become a huge flop theatrically. This article indicates that it was also a box office disappointment in Norway, where it had sold some 6k tickets after two weeks. The film was nominated for two Sundance awards, winning Vogt a screenwriting prize, nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize, won a distribution prize at Berlin International Film Festival, an AFI Fest nomination and 4 out of 7 nominations at the Norwegian Amanda Awards. Vogt has focused on screenwriting since the film; he has written for countryman Joachim Trier's latest two films, Louder Than Bombs (2015) and Thelma (2017). Blind is fresh at 94 % with a 7.7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Blind?