A favorite sermon you might hear on a Sunday is based on the saying, “I once was blind, but now I see.” People who were once metaphorically blind and now can “see” are assumed to go from a materialistic, devil-may-care attitude to a respect for spirituality. British-born director and co-writer Ido Fluk upends the metaphoric content of the saying by making a physically blind man regain his sight, and what’s more, the man changes from a spiritual person who though blind, thanks God daily for his good fortune, to a shallow, materialistic, go-getter when he regains his sight. “The Ticket” makes for generally solid entertainment partly since the cinematography by Zach Galler in and around Kingston in upstate New York is more important than the screenplay or whatever goes into the technical aspect of creating clear dialogue.
The problem with the screenplay and sound is that unless you have the brilliant hearing of a ten-year-old, you’re likely to miss the words from the muffled sounds of pillow talk between a man and a wife and later, that same man and a woman with whom he is having an affair.
Unless you are aware in entering the theater that the subject is a blind man who will regain his sight, you might be planning to walk out during the first ten minutes. As the credits rolled and as James (Dan Stevens) and his wife Samantha (Malin Akerman) are cuddling and talking sotto voce in bed, we do not see them. We watch the screen, which is mostly dark with a few painterly stroke of white. This is all that James can see. Because of an optical tumor, he lost his sight in childhood and is being cared for by Samantha, a woman who had patronized a dance for blind people with the object of caring for a man without sight. In the backstory, they had apparently married and had one boy. The important concept to know is that Samantha likes taking full charge of her man, buying his clothes, picking the (dreadful) wallpaper for their home, and taking care of schoolhouse bullying to which young Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) is subjected. James, who is infantilized, nonetheless prays daily, showing his gratitude for a happy life.
He works at a firm that hires blind telemarketers, its aim to buy out the houses of people buried in debt, then to sell the property to a developer at a nice profit. James excels on the phone, getting people to sign on the dotted line while his best friend, the also blind Bob (Oliver Platt), envies the man’s skills. When James gains his sight, he begins an affair with a hot colleague, Jessica (Kerry Bishé), buying an apartment, a car, and pretty much abandoning his wife. He is angry that Samantha never bothered to tell him about their son’s troubles.
What writer-director Fluk and his co-writer Sharon Mahihi want the audience to come away with is the idea that both James and Samantha share blame for their separation. As a marriage partner, Samantha appears to want a disabled man to allow her to dominate. James, who moves forward with the company rapidly, want the very things he warns his audiences of debt-ridden people to avoid: material goods.
Dan Stevens, who “Downton Abbey” fans know for his lead role as Matthew Crawley, delivers a strong performance particularly in a shattering scene near the conclusion, yet highest credit goes to Zachary Galler behind the lenses to display the James’s varying degrees of sight. Perhaps we in the audience were not meant even to hear every word of the pillow talk in order to stress the merits of the cinematography, but the muffled sound that pops up now and then can lead to audience frustration.
Unrated. 98 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Comments, readers? Agree? Disagree? Why?
THE TICKET
Rush River Entertainment
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya
Grade: B
Director: Ido Fluk
Written by: Sharon Mashihi, Ido Fluk
Cast: Dan Stevens, Malin Akerman, Kerry Bishé, Oliver Platt, Skylar Gaertner
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/6/17
Opens: April 7, 2017
Story – B-
Acting – A-
Technical – A
Overall – B
