Blind Light

Running just under an hour, this experimental film is the cinematic equivalent of a novella. And while there is virtue in brevity when it comes to storytelling, director Pola Rapaport's ambitious amalgam of documentary and drama is apt to test the patience of most viewers. The filmmaker herself serves as narrator for the fictional film she is creating, concerning a commercial photographer (Edie Falco, The Sopranos) who has a kind of epiphany when she visits the Villa San Michele on the Italian island of Capri. In a parallel storyline, the real-life Swedish scientist-cum-author Axel Munthe (1857-1949) had his own profound experience at the same locale when he was blinded by the bright sunlight over half a decade earlier. Melding autobiographical, biographical, and fictional figures that share a similar life-altering rapture, Blind Light relies heavily on disconcertingly grainy and blurred Super-8 and scratchy “found” film footage. Esthetically gutsy, but obviously a quite esoteric work, this is definitely optional. (T. Rich)