Blindsided (2006)

Unlike the similarly titled The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock, Blindsided is a documentary film full of ophthalmology content.  This 65 minute documentary chronicles 12 year-old Jared Hara's experience with a particularly cruel disease known as Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, a rare form of vision loss which typically develops in a person's teens or twenties.  From the National Institutes of Health:

These vision problems may begin in one eye or simultaneously in both eyes; if vision loss starts in one eye, the other eye is usually affected within several weeks or months. Over time, vision in both eyes worsens with a severe loss of sharpness (visual acuity) and color vision. This condition mainly affects central vision, which is needed for detailed tasks such as reading, driving, and recognizing faces. Vision loss results from the death of cells in the nerve that relays visual information from the eyes to the brain (the optic nerve). Although central vision gradually improves in a small percentage of cases, in most cases the vision loss is profound and permanent.

In the movie, we see Jared's ophthalmologists,  re-enactments of his exams, and witness his personal struggles with his progressive disorder.  The movie's strength lies in its rendering of how disease affects not only the individual, but also their family and friends.  Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy's basis on mutations in maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA also elicits complex feelings of guilt, blame, and unpredictability within the family.

In many ways, Blindsided (and movies like it) should be required viewing for  medical students.  Not every doctor (or even ophthalmologist) will encounter Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy in their career.  These personalized accounts of illness bring textbook descriptions alive, making obscure and intangible diseases very real.  And of course, feelings of helplessness and desperation in the patient and their family when dealing with medical conditions are something important for every practitioner to remember, even when rushing from one exam room to the next.


Blindsided won Best Documentary at the Idaho International Film Festival in 2006.  It has been showing lately on HBO, and is available on DVD.  As a movie, it relies heavily on Ken Burns-style pan and zooming, with an occasionally distracting soundtrack and some awkward sequence editing.  None of this takes too much away from the power of the story, and its illuminating portrayal of a tenacious victim of optic neuropathy.  Compared to that cloying Sandra Bullock football movie, Blindsided has a hell of a lot more ophthalmology content, and a far more nuanced representation of family dynamics and heroism.  B  .