Movies can make a big difference because they allow viewers to experience different points of view, giving a glimpse of people who live different lives. It’s one thing to understand a certain condition or lifestyle just by reading or hearing about it, but movies can make such a description more intuitive and personal. In this way, films can be a powerful tool for understanding and disseminating information.
This certainly applies to screen images of blindness. There have been many movie characters who were either partially or completely blind, and the following 10 are among the most notable. For viewers who are not familiar with blindness in their personal lives, such on-screen depictions do offer a way to understand the condition, and as long as the writers/actors are responsible and respectful, raising such awareness is ultimately a good thing.
Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade from Scent of a Woman (1992)
A film that has Al Pacino the only Oscar-winning performance The scent of a woman sees him play a blind Vietnam War veteran who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a student hired to look after him. It’s the kind of movie that shouldn’t be more than 2.5 hours long, but it’s an entertaining hour and the acting is pretty strong.
Pacino takes on this role with the ferocity and intensity for which he is known (or perhaps infamous). It may be less now, but there is a history of actors winning Oscars for playing characters suffering from serious illnesses. Whether Pacino got his Oscar because of this, or because the Oscars thought Pacino’s win was overdue, we may never know for sure.
Eli from The Book of Eli (2010)
The action takes place in a dark post-apocalyptic world. Book of Eli focuses on a lone wanderer named Eli, played by Denzel Washington. He has a book that he thinks contains the secret to saving the planet, and he makes it his mission to get it to safety.
Eli is an extremely efficient survivor, so becomes something of a plot twist when it is revealed that he is in fact blind. It adds to the mystique and prowess of the character considering how he was able to survive in a harsh world even in his condition, and Washington is more than capable of playing the role convincingly.
Blind Man from Don’t Breathe (2016)
The central antagonist in Don’t breathe unnamed and referred to simply as “Blind”. His actions become very dark towards the end of the film, but until then, some viewers may support him rather than the young people we are told are the protagonists.
This is because they break into a blind man’s house thinking it would be easy to steal, given that he (obviously) cannot see. It turns out that he is actually ruthless and well trained, fighting back would-be robbers and turning hunters into prey surprisingly quickly. For most of the movie, it seems only fair that he should protect his property to some degree…although of course the second half of the movie changes things up a lot.
Chirrut Imwe from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Rogue One has one of the most diverse and interesting actors in any star Wars movie, which makes it a shame that they’re all essentially doomed from the start, considering it’s a prequel. Fans knew it was supposed to be a movie about a dangerous mission to steal the blueprints for the Death Star, which ultimately led to its destruction in the original movie.
No matter how cool the characters are, you won’t get out alive. This also applies to Chirrut Imwe, the blind warrior monk played by the great Donnie Yen. He is perhaps best known for his role as the protagonist in Yip Man series and Rogue Onehe brings that same cold-blooded collectivity to his character, which ends up being one of the best parts of the movie.
Nick Parker from Blind Fury (1989)
Bye Blind fury it’s not a particularly famous action movie, it’s something of a cult movie. It’s a surprisingly simple story centered on a Vietnam War veteran who is also a master swordsman and his quest to help a fellow soldier rescue his son from the film’s obligatory villains.
Rutger Hauer plays the unusual warrior at the center of the film, Nick Parker. A cult actor who often played minor roles (Blade Runner perhaps the best example), any of his leading roles is admirable. It can borrow a lot from the long-term Zatoichi series, and not fulfill the premise of having a blind swordsman as effectively, but Blind fury still quite a fun action movie.
The Blind Swordsman from The Ashes of Time (1994)
Wong Kar-Wei During his career as a director, he created a fairly eclectic filmography. He specializes in character-driven stylistic dramas, but often combines such stories with other diverse genres, directing comedy, romance, sci-fi films, crime films and, with Ashes of timelarge-scale action movie with a historical setting.
It’s sort of like an episodic movie with five separate stories, each featuring the same protagonist, the warrior Ouyang Feng. During his travels, he meets many people, including Tony Leung Chiu-wai a character, an unnamed blind swordsman who works with Feng to protect the village from bandits.
Selma Yezhkova from Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Dancer in the dark has earned a reputation as one of the most emotionally complex films of all time, and it deserves it. This is a very dark musical/crime/drama about a woman who gradually goes blind and will stop at nothing to earn enough money for her only son to have surgery to prevent his blindness.
Unfortunately the world Dancer in the dark cruel and harsh, and he has other plans for Selma, skillfully played Bjork. She finds solace by secluding herself in music, with the film’s musical numbers shot in a very different way than the starkly realistic non-fantasy scenes. The central song “I’ve Seen At All” refers to Selma, who comes to terms with her blindness and assures herself that she has seen everything that is. It’s a sequence that’s equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking, and allows the viewer to understand how she feels about what’s happening to her.
Zatoichi from The Tale of Zatoichi (1962)
Zatoichi The series has aged fantastically: these action-packed films feature a blind masseur who also loves gambling and is a skilled swordsman. Movies consistently feature great action scenes with a fantastic title character at the center of their attention.
Zatoichi goes through a lot, this 26-film series has a lot of humor, action and tragedy, all of which are surprisingly well balanced. Tale of Zatoichi is the first film in the series and one of the best, serving as a great introduction to Zatoichi, who is arguably one of the most iconic and well developed blind characters in film history.
Neo from The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
For most of the original Matrix trilogy, the protagonist Neo is not blind. Only towards the end of the third film, Matrix revolutionsthat Neo went blind during the fight and spends most of the final film of the trilogy without sight.
Given his unique relationship with the Matrix itself and everything around it, he is still able to travel the world, but blindness puts him at a disadvantage at a crucial moment. When he was brought back to life in 2021 Resurrection of the Matrixalthough, fortunately, his sight returned too.
Matt Murdock/Daredevil from Daredevil (2003)
While a later look at Daredevil - In execution Charlie Cox - proved to be more popular than Ben Affleck take on the character, the less-than-stellar 2003 film is still worth mentioning. For better or worse, it was a way to introduce the character to a lot of people who don’t normally read comics.
And as far as comic book characters are concerned, Daredevil has to be the most famous who is also blind. Not only can he fight with ruthless efficiency, he is also a solid lawyer in his day job, practicing under his real name, Matt Murdock. Thanks in part to Cox’s role, he has become one of the most popular characters on screen in recent years and will hopefully continue to shine in his new Disney-Plus series.
Source: Collider
