The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 83 Days to go: 57
Movie #357: The Blind Side
It’s not a secret, I don’t think, that the racial dynamics in The Blind Side are a little bit problematic. It’s a story about a white family adopting a poor black kid from the projects and it’s told, primarily, from the perspective of the white people in his life helping poor Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) out of the ghetto and into a life of privilege and opportunity. And, absolutely, the real Michael Oher and the real Tuohy family had a relationship far deeper and more meaningful than that — he truly became a member of their family in spirit as well as by law, wholly loved as a son and as a brother — but the movie can’t convey that. Not really. It’s flatter and more two-dimensional, and it can only do so much. It deals with race in the best way it can, maybe, but it still doesn’t address it from Michael’s perspective. Aside from a free verse poem he wrote and threw away (which his white science teacher reads to his white other teachers), we don’t really experience Michael’s views on the racial dynamics at play, and if he feels the effect of them — which he most certainly would have, in some way. We don’t get Michael’s perspective on much of anything, really. According to the film, Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), Michael’s adopted mother, had to teach him the fundamentals of football because Michael couldn’t even grasp that much. It undermines Michael as a person, is my point. It’s not a perfect film.
I don’t really want to talk about that, though. What I want to talk about is how this role — this particular role — won Sandra Bullock her Best Actress Oscar.
Since she first knocked us all out wearing an Arizona Wildcats shirt and driving a bus in Speed, Sandra Bullock has been labeled “the girl next door” and “down to earth” probably a billion times. She’s grounded. She’s relatable. Even in something goofy and comedic like Miss Congeniality, Bullock plays the woman who doesn’t bother with putting on airs or even makeup because she’s comfortable in her skin and in being who she is. Leigh Anne Tuohy is not your typical Sandra Bullock character.
Maybe it’s the hair, or maybe it’s the accent, or maybe it’s the designer clothes or the meticulously put together look, but Leigh Anne Tuohy is not the girl next door. Nor is she down to earth. Not the movie Leigh Anne. (I have no basis of judgment for the real one.) This is a woman of extreme privilege and wealth. She is a woman used to buying what she wants whenever she wants it, a woman who takes charge and is used to getting her way. She can’t even conceive of a teenage boy having never had a bed of his own before. So when Michael Oher comes into Leigh Anne Tuohy’s life in the film, it rocks her to the core, and Bullock portrays that. She’s physically shaken. You see it in her facial expressions and the catch in her breath, in the slight change of her posture. And then she shifts again and shakes it off because in her world you don’t show weakness and you don’t wallow in problems, you address them and you move on. Bullock embodies every inch of that role in a way she just never has before — because she’s never had a role like this before.
It’s a thin little film, a sports movie, a feel-good flick, a light confection meant to be enjoyed and set aside. It’s not the type of movie that wins awards. But Sandra Bullock made it something bigger than that, solely through her performance. Yes, her winning an Oscar also has to do with her reputation in the industry and how well-liked she is and the narrative that it was “her time” as opposed to the time of any of her challengers in the category (two young newcomers yet to “pay their dues” or whatever, two seasoned and oft-rewarded veterans), and just the general dearth of really substantial roles for women in any given year that get seen and marketed enough to be contenders with the Academy. There are all sorts of reasons people win Oscars, and they range from the political to the financial to the popularity contest and beyond. But don’t think that means they don’t depend on the performance. Bullock’s performance was award-worthy. And it was also feel-good.
Sometimes, films can be both.
Viable Option 