Dir. John Furse, 2003, UK, 96 mins
Cast:
Ian Hart, Linus Roache
Irish university lecturer Brian Keenan and British journalist John McCarthy were taken hostage by Shi'ite militiamen in Beirut in April 1986. After an initial period in solitary confinement the men were held together in successive locations across Lebanon until Keenan was released in August 1990, four and a half years after his kidnapping. McCarthy had been held for five and a half years when he was released in August 1991.
Both Keenan and McCarthy were involved (along with writer/director John Furse) in the writing of Blind Flight, the story of the two men's extraordinary time together - which makes the film's lack of focus and depth all the more surprising. Blind Flight is basically a collection of episodic, often strangely trivial bits and bobs of the men's time in captivity, details which, if moving, don't amount to a compelling story of Keenan's and MacCarthy's personal journey. None of the themes that begin to emerge earlier on in the film are allowed to develop. Keenan, McCarthy and other western hostages in Lebanon eloquently described the deep personal transformation forced upon them by the harsh conditions of their confinement. They lived in a world in which, as Keenan put it, "nothing happens, yet everything happens", a world in which physical limitations are so drastic that "you find in your mind ways to push the walls back".
Several hostages discovered a deep religiosity and Keenan himself welcomed the visits of an imaginary companion, Turlough O'Carolan, a 17th century Irish poet and harpist. The journey brought not only personal pain and instability but also a new, heightened awareness and space for deep reflection, thanks to which Keenan was able to empathise with his captors in a way that is only tantalisingly hinted at near the end of Blind Flight ("...Our differences reconcile us to a greater whole, limitless, fathomless, in which all men can partake"). However, generally speaking, the film fails to transmit any sense of an intense, meaningful inner transformation. Hart, Roache and the rest of the cast do a good job, but the shallowness of the script makes the characters look and sound exactly the same all the way through the film. Only the more obvious aspects of the celebrated friendship between Keenan and McCarthy are explored. Blind Flight (like Roman Polanski's The Pianist) seems to confirm that films that carry a very personal meaning for the filmmaker(s) risk coming across to the rest of us as flat and unengaging. Many of the individual scenes in the beautifully filmed Blind Flight are memorable, extremely touching and, given Keenan and McCarthy's participation (and Furse's own interest in the topic of human isolation and suffering), no doubt completely authentic, and such moments carry an enormous personal meaning for anyone who's ever been affected by a comparable situation. But, as elements of a larger story, those individual bits fail to connect in a way that would sweep us along and make us feel that we know and care for the characters.
Many other aspects of the wider picture surrounding the kidnappings are completely ignored in the film. We never find out what the men's captors expected to achieve, believed in or fought for. Only a few (and incomplete) references are made to the snippets of information that reached Keenan and McCarthy from the outside world or the significance they attached to them. No connection is made between changes in the prisoners' situation and events in the outside world and no reason is given for the men's release.
Blind Flight is a hugely timely work at a time when hostage-taking and arbitrary, open-ended imprisonment (from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) are once more such burning issues. It's a shame the film stays on the surface of Brian Keenan's and John McCarthy's extraordinary journey.
Miguel Sopena
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