Blind Side Critical Analysis
The movie The Blind Side is a very well known and popular movie not only in America, but also around the world. This movie portrays the life of Michael Oher and the struggles he faced and what he did to over come those obstacles. Personally, this is my favorite movie and to have to actually analyze it thoroughly was kind of challenging, but it made me really get drawn into the movie and actually pick out the things that could be controversial in our society.
Throughout this movie it is being told from an outsiders perspective from the point of view of Leigh Anne Tuohy. I thought it was kind of weird that this movie based on the life of Michael Oher would be told from another person’s perspective. Although this was an excellent movie, I thought it might have been more effective and appropriate if it was told from Michael’s perspective so that we could get that real life experience from it. Leigh Anne obviously did play a huge part in Michael’s life, but she didn’t know his life before she met him, so it might be a little more difficult to relate that information first hand.
At the beginning of the movie, Michael Oher was really quiet and reserved, and dressed in the same dirty, raggedy clothes every day. In this picture from the movie, it shows the underdeveloped Michael Oher and how he was represented at the beginning of the movie. The lighting that is shown in this scene is very musty looking and makes it look as if it is a dirty and old part of town. In this scene they are trying to portray the life that Michael had once lived and made it look a little on the negative side to make his “better” life look even more astounding. This scene creates a negative stereotype of what the ghetto looks like and the kinds of people that live there. It can affect our society because it can target certain people and their backgrounds and could potentially offend someone from that created “stereotype”. He
was very underdeveloped and was really hard to communicate and relate with because he never said anything. In this picture to the left is a picture from a scene later on in the movie after the Tuohy’s had taken him in. You can tell that he is more dressed up in nicer clothes, he looks more social and cleaned up. Towards the end of the movie you can see that Michael was starting to develop more as a character and was someone people could actually relate to and sympathize with. As the movie went on and he was admitted into Briarcrest High School the way his character started to get more developed made it so much easier to relate to and understand him and his life story. They portrayed him as very unintellectual and that he didn’t really know what he was doing. In his book “I Beat the Odds” he states that he didn’t like the way the movie portrayed him in that light. He said that he was actually pretty smart; he just slacked off and had no motivation and no one pushing him to get out of bed and go to school like a bunch of other kids. He states that it would have made more sense if they had made that clear in the movie rather than just making him look completely incompetent.
Along with the omission of his intelligence, he also says in his book how he had a serious love for the sport of basketball, and that was the first sport he fell in love with. The movie left that part of his life out, which I thought would have been an awesome add in to show that he liked and played more than one sport. He also goes to say that the movie made him seem really unaware of what he was doing in football and created a negative light on his athletic abilities. Michael explained that he had always loved football and played ever since he was a little boy living in “Hurt Village”. In the movie they portray him as someone who doesn’t know how to play football with the scene of S.J. teaching him all
the football positions with the spices and condiments.
Throughout the movie they portrayed Michael as a huge guy compared to the rest of the characters, which he was, but the way they filmed and set up scenes really showed how large Michael really was. In this picture the way the angle is sort of aiming up a tad makes Michael look so much taller than the rest of his teammates. This creates that image of the actual size of Michael compared to the rest of his teammates. In his book he goes on and on saying how he was always the tallest one in his class and the taller one out of his siblings, including his older brothers. He said his height really took a toll on him in sports, especially basketball, because of his size refs would always be calling fouls on him because it looked like he was fouling another player rather than trying to control his body size.
Throughout the movie, I feel like they showed a lot of the positive things that have happened in Michael’s life, but hardly mentioned or showed the struggles he had to face before meeting the Tuohy’s. In Michael’s book, he states that he loved the reaction and positive attention that the movie had obtained, but that he wished there would have been more factual information. Like the fact that they left out that he knew a lot about sports just because it made for a better movie for S.J. to teach him how to play. Or that he was actually intelligent, he was just never formally taught how to study or take tests. He also claims that he wish it would have mentioned more about his siblings. There was a scene in the movie where the Tuohy’s took Michael out to dinner, and as they were leaving the restaurant, Michael runs back inside and hugs, what we think is some random guy or maybe a friend, his brother. We never learn anything about his brother or even his name. The movie never mentions any of his several siblings and really doesn’t give a good inside look at his mother other than the one scene we see her in. In his book he states that his mother would come to a sporting event every now and then and sometimes bring one of his brothers, but in the movie they never show her at any of the events and just shine this larger negative light on her.
In this scene, we see the Tuohy family gathered around the table for a thanksgiving dinner. What you can’t see from this picture is that when Michael was given the food he went and sat down at the table by himself while the rest of the family was gathered around the TV in the living room watching football. This really shows the kind of person Michael was. In his book he says that his family meant so much to him, and that every once in a while when his mom was clean and at home, that him and his siblings would sit around the table and eat food together and even though he was in a new home, he was trying to maintain his family traditions. The Tuohy’s, Leigh Anne to be exact, finally noticed that he was sitting at the dining room table alone eating dinner when they got up and turned the TV off and joined him at the table. S.J. explained that they never sat at that table to eat, but it goes to show that they wanted to make Michael feel comfortable and at home and joined him at the table to enjoy a family meal together. I really liked this scene because even though Michael was in a new home with new people, he was still trying to maintain the traditions of what him and his family used to do.
Throughout the movie they never mention any of the things that his biological family used to do, but in his book he tells the readers all about it. He shares everything about all his siblings, and his former foster families. I think it would have made the movie even better and more fundamentally correct if they would have shown some of Michael’s previous life and the families he was in and out of and the impact that they made on his life. He mentions in his book all the good friends and role models he had in his life, but they were absent in the movie. He states that a lot of things in the movie were correct, just not exactly the way they had happened. He also explains that there are scenes in the movie that really never happened or was just made up to make a better and more entertaining movie.
In Michael’s book he talks all about how he loves to give to charity and help out anyway he can, but obviously as far as you can go financially. I think in the movie they really did a good job showing the kind of warm hearted, down to earth kind of person he was. With the scene of the two little girls on the swings, and him pushing them and the girls having the time of their lives. And the scene where Leigh Anne takes him to the ghetto and she was saying how she was kind of scared and Michael explains that he has her back. Even just the little things throughout the movie like those scenes really showed what kind of person Michael was and that he would really do anything for anyone.
Like I stated previously, this is my favorite movie and it was fun to go through and pick out different scenes and compare them to his book. I found this paper really easy to write and the book was really easy to read because I have seen the movie forwards and backwards and keep up with the Tuohy’s in real life. I think this movie does a great job from the lighting and angle placements in the different scenes to portray different areas of the city and the different places Michael travels around and shows them effectively. I think it is important to not only watch The Blind Side but to also read Michael’s book “I Beat the Odds” because they really coincide with each other and makes everything fall into place and makes everything more clear. I’m glad I read the book because it made everything make sense and I got to know things about Michael that they didn’t show in the movie, and made his character more clear to me. This movie is a great one because it challenges society and shows the struggles Michael faces and the obstacles he has to overcome to find a new and better life outside of “Hurt Village”.