Is Harry Caine truly blind?

Very few people are "totally" blind. In the U.S., legally blind (i.e. eligible for Federal government benefits) is a minimum of 20/200 with correction, or able to see less than 20% of the visual field. There are a huge variety of visual impairments, such as: can only perceive light, cloudy vision, vision only thru pinpoints in the visual field, tunnel vision, better with less light, better with more light. For someone who lost sight later in life, Mateo makes a very good adjustment.

I think it was an oversight, a blooper, that had Harry looking out of the peephole. After the accident, the doctor said he would never regain his sight; that he was totally blind, so it just didn't make sense that if someone rang the bell that he would "look" instead of asking who was there.

I thought that too, because at the beginning he said he created a persona of a writer that he became inseparable from, but that it would be a blind writer. Its only later on that he appeared to actually be blind. The peephole thing was weird, I agree. And, though I dont know much about blindness, I find it inconceivable that he should remember the voice of a person he knew before his blindness, and who he hasnt seen for fourteen years. Also, Ray X would have been a teenager back then so his voice was probably completely different. He also had a picture of Lena in his desk under a bag. Kind of hidden but close by. Why would he keep it there?

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I think he's faking it! I'm starting to think the chick from the opening scene is a testament to that.

If he's faking it, he knows he's in a movie and he's faking it for the audience, too. Otherwise he wouldn't go to all the trouble of going to a café and asking someone to dial a number he took out from a drawer when he was alone at home; he'd just pick up the phone and dial the number himself.

I think he either looks through the peephole outta habit or cuz he can tell light from dark, so he can see if someone's at the door (which is kinda stupid anyway, cuz the doorbell wouldn't ring by itself).

I didn't like the movie very much. It seems kind of like a glorified soap opera.

If he was faking it, why would he sit around reading things in braille? Alone...



"...the young man would love it too, but he can't afford it."

The intent of the film is that he is not faking the blindness. Whether you think the film maker has accurately portrayed this is another matter. But he is shown acting blind when he is alone, reading Braille, etc. And there's no motivation given for faking it. I would say that a theme of the movie is that he also became psychologically blind, and at the end starts a recovery from that, even though he is still visually blind.

Cortical blindness (the diagnosis given by the doctor, at least as translated in the subtitles) is not necessarily total, as others have mentioned. It's certainly conceivable that he could pick up clues of lighting through the peephole, and that he could pick up the general sense of the lighting of a scene shown on the screen, especially when these are combined with other cues.

The part that's hard to believe is that cortical blindness due to trauma is a severe brain injury, and it's extremely rare to have the blindness with no other apparent brain injury. Mateo recovered mighty quickly from an auto accident in which he suffered such brain injury. (It's not clear exactly how long he was in the hospital, but his motel room had not been cleared out.) It's so rare that I found a case study published in 2006 in the Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand which says "the authors report the first case of cortical blindness without any neurological deficits in a patient with bilateral occipital lobe hemorrhage after a motorcycle accident". Since Mateo does not appear to have any other neurological deficits, he's in that "extremely rare" category.

As others have also pointed out, he didn't do the actual editing. Ernesto Jr (aka Ray X) comments "this is as far as we've gotten with the editing". The "we" is indefinite (at least in translation). Ernesto and Diego and Judit work in the field, so it's totally believable that they did the actual editing.

Mateo heard the scene on DVD and knew something was wrong. I find this totally believable: acting is as much in the sound of the voice as in the movements of the face and body. He didn't have to see to know which was wrong and which was right. A poster found it "inconceivable" that Mateo would recognize voices after 14 years, but I find that one of the easiest parts to believe. We humans are not very good at imagining a voice we know, but we are very good at recognizing voices. (In fact, I recently had the experience of encountering someone I had not seen or spoken with in about 15 years. At first I did not recognize her face, but as soon as she spoke, I recognized her voice.) And Mateo was a film director -- probably with acting experience -- and so was deeply and professionally involved in the sound of voices. So yes, he absolutely would remember voices after 14 years, and would remember the good and bad takes and the sounds of the voices in each.

Yet another comment related to the photo of Lena in a drawer. It was not in his desk drawer but in a nearby storage drawer. In any case, why would he remove it if he can't see it? Judit retrieved the photos (including the bag) from the motel room. Probably she put them in that drawer. Mateo might not even have been aware of them until Diego started re-assembling the torn photos.

I too find quite a few weaknesses in the movie, but the only weakness I see in the blindness is that "cortical blindness" is sort of a convenience and not a believable diagnosis under the circumstances.

Edward

After her confession, Judit leaves the table and goes to the bar to refresh her drink, leaving Harry alone with Diego. I thought I heard him say something like, "Don't look at me like that." Merely intuitive or another clue planted by Almodovar? Harry the human being, like Harry the director, is blind to so much around him including the real nature of his relationship with Judit and Diego. Almodovar uses Harry/Mateo's real or allegorical blindness on many levels.