There’s a semi-sweet romance at the heart of Michael Mailer’s Blind, one that, if given more room to bloom could sustain a genuine, watchable drama. Unfortunately, this film pads the runtime with a bunch of uninteresting bullshit that suffocates the otherwise solid chemistry between Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore. It’s a shame, because the two aren’t bad together, but nothing on the page or in the production serves them well at all.
Moore stars as Suzanne Dutchman, the rich housewife whose husband, Mark (Dylan McDermott), is a ruthless crooked businessman. He gets arrested for shady dealings and for her unknowing part in his schemes, she makes a plea deal and is sentenced to community service. That comes in the form of reading to the blind, where she meets Bill Oakland (Baldwin), a novelist turned English professor who has assistants at this center read his students’ stories to him. At first, they fail to get along because, well, Suzanne is a wisp of a stereotype and Bill is a poor man’s version of Jack Nicholson’s character from As Good As It Gets. In all seriousness though, the two grow fond of one another, but just as they’re close to consummating this mutual appreciation, the only witness in Mark’s case dies and he’s set free, creating a love triangle.
Now, the premise isn’t terrible. Suzanne is a woman who has her entire world ripped away from her and in that fragile state, she meets a charming curmudgeon who is the antithesis of her psychotic husband. Were the film primarily focused on Suzanne and her inner life, this would be a fascinating character study and a sharp vehicle for Moore to remind audiences why she became such a big star in the first place. She’s clearly got a lot left in the tank and has just been waiting for the right role to come along. This just isn’t it. The script, from Mailer’s younger brother John Buffalo Mailer, couldn’t possibly be less concerned with Suzanne, or women in general really.
Before the inciting event that gets the plot going, we’re treated to plenty of screentime for Mark and his borderline abusive relationship with a new protégé, and when we’re introduced to Bill, he gets a mirroring mentorship with a young fan of his. On the one side, we’ve got McDermott as a rageaholic yuppie douchebag taking a sparring session with his assistant too far for sport, while on the other, you’ve got to watch a young black man clean Baldwin’s toilet while he regurgitates pseudointellectual bullshit that would have been deemed too on the nose to be in Finding Forrester.
Seriously, at one point in this film, a character tells Bill he just needs a change of scenery and he deadpans, “I’m blind. The scenery never changes.” It’s not played as a joke, either. Measured by the dramatic silence surrounding its awkward delivery, this is supposed to feel profound. The film is beautifully photographed, if blandly composed, but what holds it back is an overwrought screenplay that more closely resembles an SNL parody of prestige picture storytelling than a legitimate film you’re expected to take at face value. There are fleeting moments of poignancy, like the shame Moore telegraphs when she first arrives at the center for the blind and is referred to by her docket number and not her name, but those brief bits of subtlety are drowned out by repeated scenes of McDermott (delivering fine work with a pointless character) auditioning for a larger movie about wall street narcissism.
By the time the romance really begins to gel, the movie throws Mark back into freedom to keep our lovebirds apart, but there’s no drama to be wrung from this development. It just kills time until they eventually get together, rather than doing anything interesting or engaging with this roadblock. Blind may be marketed like a love story, but it’s constructed like a shitty, first draft of a novel where no one has taken the time to focus on what matters. It’s a real tragedy for Moore, in particular, who shows she can still go, and Baldwin, who oddly doesn’t seem to mind how far beneath him this material really is.
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