Blink: Visually Gorgeous, Heartfelt Doc Illustrates What Counts Most in the World

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

It’s impossible to overstate the range of emotions, from heartbreak to delight to humility, conjured by the new documentary Blink, which is also visually dazzling thanks to its pedigree as a National Geographic Documentary.

Blink follows an otherwise ordinary Montreal-based family — mother Édith Lemay, father Sébastien Pelletier and their kids Mia, 11, Léo, 9, Colin, 6, and Laurent, 4 — as they face a life-altering challenge: three of the four children are diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease, retinitis pigmentosa, that will eventually render them blind.

As Édith explains early in the film, “When you get to four kids, you accept chaos.” What she and Sébastien cannot accept is the powerlessness they feel as Mia, Colin and Laurent begin to lose their vision.

The parents hit upon a novel idea they can execute on. They will fill their children’s visual memories with spectacular sights gathered around the globe during a sprawling year-long family holiday funded by a windfall from the sale of the company Sébastien worked for and owns shares in.

It won’t be luxe: Sébastien budgets the trip at about $200 a day, which means hostels and home stays. But spartan accommodation also means more authentic experiences closer to the reality of the residents in the areas the Pelletier family visits.

With a bucket-list of wished-for experiences crafted by the children as their roadmap (“ride a hot air balloon, visit a castle, explore a rain forest, eat with chopsticks, learn a new language”), the Pelletier clan sets off, ping-ponging across the planet with extended stays in Malaysia, Nepal, Egypt, Ecuador and the Amazon basin among other stops.

The sights along the way are, of course, spectacular and include a nine-day hike through the Himalayas — where the children, ostensibly being home schooled throughout — recite multiplication tables as they walk; and later, camping and watching the sunset in Egypt’s White Desert National Park.

Scenes of joy and silliness, not to mention phenomenal family camaraderie and the odd but expected tantrum, are punctuated by the reality darkening the corners of their journey. In one especially wrenching scene during Léo’s 10th birthday celebration, baby-of-the-family Laurent finally grasps what blindness will mean for him and his siblings. He vows to grow up and build a machine to fix it.

What isn’t explicitly shown but is apparent to any adult viewer are the gargantuan logistical feats performed daily by Édith and Sébastien, who must shepherd and safeguard the children while maintaining status quo duties like doing laundry for a family of six on the road and keeping up with bills back home while carving out reflective time for themselves. Precious little of that is on offer.

Not that the couple seem to mind. Indeed, Édith and Sébastien exponentially raise the bar on the qualifications for “world’s best mom” and “world’s best dad.” No mere T-shirt or mug is going to cut it for these two. But their exceptionally kind, inquisitive, and well-adjusted children are proof of their success in their Herculean mission to imprint upon them the glory of Earth and its people. Vision is a bonus, but the Pelletiers and their filmmakers make clear that what’s inside the mind and the heart is what counts the most.

Blink. Directed by Daniel Roher and Edmund Stenson. With Édith Lemay, Sébastien Pelletier, Mia Pelletier, Léo Pelletier, Colin Pelletier, and Laurent Pelletier. In select theatres October 4.