OPEN YOUR EYES (2015)
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2016 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
The Seva Foundation is a non-profit eye-care charity that partners with
local hospitals and communities around the globe to develop sustainable, sight-saving programs. To date, it has successfully restored sight to four million blind people worldwide. Two of their success stories are
documented in Irene Taylor Brodsky's eye-opening "Open Your Eyes," an HBO documentary short produced by Seva co-founder Dr. Larry Brilliant.
Manisara and Durga are an elderly blind couple living in a remote mountain village in Nepal when a team of eye specialists offers them the chance to
have their cataracts surgically removed for free. The corrective surgery
takes all of six minutes--sixty operations are performed at the clinic the
day Manisara and Durga are treated--and costs only a few dollars per
patient. The film's "reveal" is, of course, particularly revelatory, with
our humble principals able see their grandchild for the very first time.
For Manisara and Durga, the trek down the mountainside truly is "a journey
from darkness to sight." Humanitarian filmmaker Brodsky is no stranger to medically-relevant documentaries. Her feature debut, "Hear and Now"
(2007), detailed her deaf parents' receipt of cochlear implants, and her
2009 short subject "The Final Inch," about the potentially crippling polio virus, was nominated for an Academy Award. In "Open Your Eyes," Brodsky
brings both sensitivity and insight to the global reality of cataract blindness, and the inexpensive ease by which it can be cured.
--
David N. Butterworth
rec.arts.movies.reviews
butterworthdavidn@gmail.com
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