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Film Review | Blind Spot (2011)

Film run-time: 5 minutes | Starring Brandon Brackenbury, Jocelyn Geddie, Bridget Tobin
Written and Directed by Matthew K. Nayman, Visual Effects by Mike Boers, Assistant Directed by Luke Van Osch

Blind Spot“, a 2011 short film by Matthew Nayman, is a deceptively simple concept for a film, telling of a traveller’s need to change his flight plans from his original schedule, and finding great difficulty in doing so while driving. In the midst of this all-too-familiar struggle, an unusual scenery unfolds in the background beyond his view.

Locked down in a static composition which exemplifies a typical set-up for an in-vehicle shot, the film both subverts an oft-overlooked background space and incubates viewer anticipation as the main character, Steven, encounters obstacle after obstacle in his quest to change his morning flight to an evening flight. The sheer uneventfulness of being in telephone limbo assures a steady conviction that something, anything, has to happen—not only for the hapless protagonist, but for the film itself.

Thematically speaking, the film toys with the tunnel vision that people acquire when they are in a personal struggle which seems to take hold of all senses; one is consumed by the elements of the crisis and becomes unaware of greater happenings. As a larger metaphor, Steven is prototypical of individual needs overshadowing collective need in any given organization, and how our immediate concerns may be irrelevant to a more substantial narrative, even as the latter becomes sobering.

Operating within the framework of the story and on the mechanism of story itself, the film also comments on the expectations of drama and the absolute banality of most day-to-day affairs, which so numb the faculties that when we, as the protagonist, and as viewers of this fiction, are finally confronted with a sizable occurrence, we perhaps become subconsciously nonchalant like Steven. Unresponsive to typical stimulations, and needing greater and greater analeptics to resume our sentience, we are a product of our conditioning and a result of uninvolving interactions.

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