The blind side - 2009

I like it very much. A beautiful story, well done everyone, a really good movie. I happens from time to time. And Sandra Bullock was amazing. Plus they say it’s a true story, and the credits at the end show pictures of the real people that inspired this story, and if it’s really real then it’s even more beautiful. My heart to the real protagonists of this story, all of them, the whole family for the love they gave him and to him for accepting it and repaying it. 
I wonder if that could happen now.. if the internet shows anything is that somehow the world got a lot nastier since the orange one came on the stage... anyway, the movie:

It starts with a man, Tony, asking a high school coach to admit his son Steven and his friend Big Mike, who’s currently living in their house and sleeping on a couch. Steven’s grades are enough to admit him, but for Mike the coach has to fight and remind them that it’s a christian school and this is the right thing to do… surprisingly that’s enough and he gets a shot in the school. At his first day there is an assessment test for everybody, and he leaves it blank… not a good start, but one teacher who doesn’t give up on him finds out that with a bit of encouragement, asking the questions orally, he knows some of the stuff, he does pay attention in class, even if he’s really behind. 

Tony’s wife is tired of having Big Mike (Quinton Aaron) in their home, so he goes away. We see sometimes bits of his past, few images but enough to understand that he was taken away from his family by social services (yet, where are they now?). Mike has no place to live so he plans to sleep in the school gym because it’s warmer there. Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) sees him one night, alone under the rain; she stops to ask him where he’s going, and why, and if he has a place to stay, and I love how she says to him that he must not lie to her, when he’s about to nod. When she raised her voice telling him not to lie she looked like a mother to her child :-)

She brings him home for the night, sure that it was the right thing to do, only a little bit worried that he might steal from them, because after all she doesn’t know him yet, but he doesn’t. Next morning, he put everything in order and went out. She runs after him and asks him if he has plans for Thanksgiving… so he comes back to spend it with them :-) He never speaks but he’s very polite :-) Before buying new clothes for him she drives him to his mother’s house but she was evicted, so Leigh Anne buys him something new - his father who left home many years before has died very recently, and his mother was a drug addict so he was taken away. 

Leigh Anne’s friends are very snob and don’t understand what she’s doing, still their words make her go home and have a talk with her teenage daughter Collins (Lily Collins); she asks her if it’s a problem for her, because if it was she could find a way to help him having him staying somewhere else, but Collins doesn’t mind him at all, it’s just that her friends don’t understand either, but she also doesn’t care, and shows it clearly when she sits with him at the school library. It was a lovely scene when she said something like ‘what? we always study together at home’ :-) because it was so normal, that’s what was so special about it, about how the family acted, not as if they were doing some big gesture but as if it was the normal thing to do. Very nice. That’s the right way.

The only thing that Michael asked for was to get a driver license - yes, I think it was the only thing, because after all he never asked to be called Michael, he only replied that he didn’t like to be called Big Mike after she told him to tell her something, anything about him.

To apply for a driver license he needs to show documents but they can’t find his name anywhere, so Leigh Anne starts the procedure to have legal guardianship, more or less adopting him, I think. They tell her that they don’t need any real parent’s signature because Michael is under the State’s care (care?) but she goes anyway to talk to his mother, tell her her intentions and ask for the boy’s real name: Michael Williams apparently, but he keeps his name Michael Oher. I don’t know if she ever told him that she talked to her. When they all ask him, Leigh Anne, Sean, Collins and Sean Junior, if he wants to become a member of the family, he replies that he thought he was already :-) Indeed :-)

He gets his driver license and Sean gives him a pickup. When SJ wants to buy a new videogame and she can’t take him to the shop, Michael drives him there and they sing in the car, he gets distracted and they have an accident. When called, Leigh Anne rushes there: Michael is sitting saying I’m sorry while SJ is with the paramedics, but seems to be fine. They tell her that it’s incredible how little he was hurt, and when she sees Michael’s arm she understands that he protected the child keeping him back with his big arm :-) She’s worried but not angry :-)

Since he’s a big guy he starts playing football, but doesn’t seem to understand what he has to do, so she tells him to protect his teammates as if he was protecting her or SJ, and SJ trains him and explains to him everything he has to do in the game. Michael improves very quickly, he becomes a good player, and of course that could get him into a college, but his grades are too low for that so they hire a private teacher: Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) tutors him patiently and his grades go up enough.

Their first real game it’s not going so well at first, but when coach Cotton (Ray McKinnon) rages against the referee that he’s one of his boys Michael wants to protect him too :-) and starts playing very well. SJ tapes it all and sends a video to every college. After seeing that video, every school wants him. A man from every state comes to talk to him, trying to make him choose his school, and we can say the same for Miss Sue who tells him a sinister story about the Tennessee football field, because she went to the Ole Miss as did Leigh Anne and Sean.

After Michael chooses to go there, a woman speaks to him, investigating the reasons for his choice, insinuating that Leigh Anne’s family took him in, payed for his education and clothes and everything so that he would go to the school that they support financially… he never even considered that eventuality and is shocked: runs out and asks Leigh Anne about it, not really waiting for a full reply, then goes back to his old neighbourhood looking for his mother without finding her. He meets some guys he knows instead and they offer him a beer and start talking to him. The gang boss makes offensive remarks about Leigh Anne and Collins, because that’s what a certain kind of people always do, and he gets mad and fights them, and goes aways. Leigh Anne looks for him everywhere and when she gets there that guy tells her what happened (more or less, I think he left out the reason why Michael snapped..,) and threatens him, and now she gets mad and tells him that he threatened her family, and lets him know that if he tries anything she’ll be armed and ready. When Michael finally calls her she meets him and tells him that it is entirely his decision what school he wants to go to, it’s his life and they’ll support his decision regardless. 

Michael is now happy and tells the investigating woman that she kept wondering why everybody else did this or that but never asked him what he wanted or why he chose that school, and he tells her that he wants to go there because that’s where his family went :-D

It ends with them taking him to college and saying their goodbyes. 

ITA the blind side