Blink movie review: One of 2024’s best documentaries; a deeply moving and life-affirming tribute to human resilience

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A still from the documentary film Blink, available in India on Disney+ Hotstar.

Blink is a breathtaking achievement in documentary filmmaking. Barely a moment is wasted, almost as if the movie, like its subjects, values the preciousness of time. It isn’t ashamed of pulling at the audience’s heartstrings, even though it doesn’t have to lift a finger to achieve the desired effect, considering the in-built empathy of the subject matter. It helps that all four of the children are absolutely adorable, and their unique personalities shine despite the limited time we spend with them. The only girl of the bunch, Mia (13), is old enough to understand the magnitude of what’s happening to her. And the film is intelligent enough to capture her in moments of quiet introspection; she seems to realise that she cannot waste a single moment. “Will you enjoy travelling when you grow older?” her mother asks as they gaze at the sunset in Oman, and Mia replies, “Yes, even if I can’t see the desert, I can play with the sand.”

Her brothers – Leo (11), Colin (9) and Laurent (7) – are simply too young to grasp what’s going on. A tragic scene shows the youngest, Laurent, visibly struggling while playing football in South America after sunset. Edith and her husband, Sebastien, are eager to let him experience the difficulties he’s going through. They don’t hold the kids back; life will throw a lot at them, they might as well get used to the knocks. At this stage in their deteriorating condition, the kids have lost the ability to see at nighttime. They will soon lose their entire eyesight. The journey that the Pelletiers go on would be arduous even for able-bodied folks; it’s positively brutal for little children with a rapidly declining field of vision.

Witnessing their hike across the Himalayas is gruelling, but watching Laurent weep while saying goodbye to Bella, the doggie friend they made along the way, is even more heartbreaking. He will always remember her. The children also bond with Gustavo, a young boy who lives in the Amazon Basin and dreams of becoming a pilot one day. He will always remember them. There is little room for pity in Blink; the movie makes it a point to take an optimistic tone. It really is a life-affirming tale, tinged with the sort of melancholy that you’d find in one of those television shows that Ricky Gervais created as a sincere alternative to his rabble-rousing comedy career.

Blink is directed by Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher – the latter previously helmed the incredible HBO documentary Navalny, about the now-deceased Russian opposition leader. On the surface, there’s little similarity between these films, but if you think about it, they’re both about people who intimately understood the idea of mortality. Navalny ended with the politician predicting his own death, and instructing his admirers to never stop the fight. In Blink, the act of watching the children’s resilience is reason enough to reevaluate one’s own life. Perhaps the most memorable stretch of the movie involves the family getting stranded in a cable car for over nine hours, as if the universe looked at them and thought, “Let’s dial up the danger, shall we?” It proves to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

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A still from the documentary film Blink, available in India on Disney+ Hotstar.

As day turns to night, three of the children find their entire world going dark. Paired with Laurent’s fear of never being rescued, the tension in the cramped cable car is palpable. The filmmakers couldn’t have curated a more poignant metaphor for the children’s situation if they’d tried. And yet, they live to fight another day. Blink is brilliant testament to one family’s bravery, an incredibly perceptive piece of cinema that begs to be seen, and promises to leave the viewer touched.

Blink
Directors – Edmund Stenson, Daniel Roher
Rating – 4.5/5