The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic

Did you say the pandemic sucked? It sucked worse for Jaakko. As played by actor Petri Poikolainen in his first role, the titular The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See ‘Titanic,” this gentle, buoyant, witty soul is making the best of a crappy situation. He is blind, but he’s also confined to a wheelchair by MS, and often stuck in his apartment, dependent on visits from an assistant to handle some essential details. All that goes out the door, literally, when Jaakko must urgently reach his online girlfriend Sirpa in another city. No spoilers here, but suffice to say he’s got his reasons. Transit by cab and train shouldn’t be too complicated, right? Instead, the comic tone turns thriller in the hands of Finnish writer-director Teemu Nikki. If you take Jaakka as a blackly humorous superhero (and the kick-ass Paikolainen sure plays him that way), you won’t be wrong. He’s named his legs “Rocky” and “Rambo.” A big favorite at this year’s SXSW film festival, Blind Man is both an unlikely crowd-pleaser and a pandemic parable.