By Sandra Hall
THE BLIND SEA ★★★★
(PG) 95 minutes
Matt Formston shows no outward sign of his blindness, something that sometimes got him into trouble as a child. Drivers of the school bus would not allow the nimble skateboarder to get on board, convinced the disability pass in his hand had been stolen.
Documentary The Blind Sea follows daring big wave surfer Matt Formston who has macular dystrophy.
This elegantly constructed documentary is his story, and it affords a revealing glimpse of how he navigates what would be a normal life if it weren’t for his accomplishments as an extraordinarily gifted big wave surfer, regularly laying his life on the line.
When the action begins, he’s already scored three world para-surfing championships, but he’s just hit a low spot, failing to get a single wave in an event in Costa Rica, which he had been tipped to win.
Not only has he let himself down, he tells the film’s director, Daniel Fenech, he’s failed to deliver on the sacrifices made by his wife, Rebecca, and their children. Rebecca is unconcerned. She knows these guilt trips just drive him to do better next time.
He suffers from macular dystrophy, a condition that means he sees two large spots in the centre of the eye with a little peripheral vision. When it was diagnosed, the doctor told his parents he would never play sport or do anything else much and his best option was a school for the blind.
Instead, they chose a mainstream school and encouraged him to try everything his schoolmates were doing. His father urged him on with the theory there are no barriers, only obstacles to be negotiated one way or another. Even so, Don Formston now admits with a mixture of affection and wonder that he cannot understand how his son does what he does.
We discover that sightlessness does not heighten the performance of his other senses. Rather, it makes him do more with them. He has mapped out in his head the places with which he’s most familiar, and he does the same when he goes somewhere new.
One of the film’s most engaging sequences is a conversation he has with fellow surfer Layne Beachley while the pair are paddling in the shallows. He has a pair of goggles that simulate the amount of vision that remains to him, and she puts them on and tries to catch a wave, falling off her board at the first few attempts but gradually learning to tune her sense of touch and hearing to the movement of the water.
The film builds to its climax at Nazare in Portugal, where Formston is to pit himself against “the Everest of waves”, the biggest in the world.
The training is rigorous. He must extend his already impressive record in holding his breath underwater because Nazare’s surf could hold him down for minutes on end, but eventually, he’s ready, assisted by a team who tow him out to the waves by jetboat.
Then he’s off on an exhilarating series of rides that leave you marvelling at the resourcefulness of someone who has never let himself be disabled by doubt.
The Blind Sea is released in cinemas on August 15.
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