A fine story about a fine family doing a fine thing

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2010)

Having read and, by word of mouth, extracted so many positive reviews for "The Blind Side" it was nearly impossible not to head into watching it without any preconceived idea of how great - or, for that matter, how poor - it might turn out to be.
I see its central theme summarized in one sentence delivered by the woman portraying Michael's crack-addled mother who, upon learning Leigh Anne Tuohy (portrayed quite beautifully by Sandra Bullock) has taken in her son to her home: "Well, what a fine Christian woman you are." That is it, really, summed up: The Tuohys did the fine, if extremely improbable, Christian thing by taking a very large black teenage boy into their home. Not just from the wrong side of the tracks, Michael Oher is from the wrong side of life: His mother, not so much a terrible person as a conglomeration of terrible decisions (and, yes, it's often hard to separate the two, but I think it's a useful distinction to make in this case), is so deeply disabled by her addictions that she couldn't care to attend to more needs than her own basic physiological ones, have largely left her many children to whim and circumstance.
Michael is a product of this immense, criminal neglect, of an educational system that has discarded him and an environment that merely chews up those who are unfortunate enough to be born into it.
But something happened on the way to a dead-end life: Someone - a few people, actually - stood up for Michael, without knowing who he was, really, but rather they saw a faint glimmer of something special in him. Sure, they saw athletic skill - and that has pragmatic value to people these days, especially at the professional level - but they also saw someone of character, a kid who hadn't just given up and succumbed to the lifestyle being offered to him.
And the movie addresses, head-on, the controversy bound to be associated with the notion of a well-to-do white family stepping in and "saving" a black kid who seemed destined by circumstance to be neglected and forgotten. Not being black I can't say if the idea that white people - especially white Republicans from the South - "saving" black kids is a particularly repellent one, but I suspect from the generally militant ideology that tends to surround modern "blackness" being true to your being black - even if that ultimately means sliding by this mortal coil with few, if any, prospects - does indeed make it quite repellent.
Of course, if a well-to-do black family had taken Oher in there would be no issue and that, really, is the problem: The inherent - and not entirely ungrounded - general distrust of white folk by black folk. The NCAA in the movie merely sits in to speak for millions of blacks who are casting a jaundiced eye to the notions being presented by "The Blind Side." For the rest of us - blissfully ignorant white folk, I suppose - "The Blind Side" is a great story about a great family who merely decided to the right, Christian thing and step into and ultimately embrace what might be considered by most a very uncomfortable situation. Against considerable odds, Oher has succeeded where few have, even those born to considerably better circumstances. He has triumphed and, by extraction, so has the family who adopted him and made him a permanent part of their lives.