KEY POINTS:
BLINDSIGHT
Director: Lucy Walker
Running time: 104 mins
Rating: PG
Screening: Rialto
Herald Rating: * * * *
Verdict: Documentary about blind teenagers climbing Everest is smart, thoughtful and not at all what you expect
Films about people triumphing over disability are best approached with caution: soaring string sections and endless climactic waves of emotion can induce saccharine shock.
But an unprepossessing premise - six blind Chinese and Tibetan teenagers make an assault on Everest - hides a challenging and thoughtful documentary about cultural misunderstanding.
Like the best documentaries, it has a belter of a main character in Sabriye Tenberken, a young blind German woman who founded the organisation Braille Without Borders to care for the blind who are shunned by family and community as sinful or possessed.
Sabriye, who makes words like "gutsy" and "inspirational" seem wan and inadequate, invites to BWB's school in Lhasa the blind American climber Erik Weihenmayer, who had scaled the world's seven highest peaks in a single year.
When he suggests her pupils join him in an expedition up Everest, they are enthusiastic (though Tenberken is cautious).
The trip soon turns into an odd battle of wills: for Weihenmayer's (sighted) fellow guides the goal is everything; for the kids, it's a process, because standing on summits means less to you when you can't look down.
Director Walker, who doesn't flinch when the going gets tough, sees - and lets us see - more than the characters themselves always realise. It's a striking piece of work, a riveting film which is only incidentally, and never excessively, inspirational.
