The Ticket is a mashup of Charly meets the Bible story of Jesus healing the blind man with a dash of 99 Homes. It stars the excruciatingly hot and talented Dan Stevens as James, the blind family man who one day wakes up and can see, which is a miracle, isn’t it? There are unexpected revelations and complications to this new gift. What would you do if you were blind and suddenly could see?
The Ticket cleverly introduces us to the main character’s world by depriving the audience of one of the two senses that you need to watch a movie: sight. The sound gives us a sense of how small, warm, intimate and cozy his world is. When he can see, it is similar to the Garden of Eden and eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Before he can see, he is unashamed of his life, but afterwards he compares himself to others and feels naked in comparison. His earlier prayer becomes a lie and a desperate plea to return to that innocent state, “I am thankful for what I have. I am deeply satisfied with my life and everything in it. I live for today, and I enjoy what I do. I do not compare myself to others.” Seeing has its rewards, but it also ejects him from paradise and opens his eyes to the unspoken physical cues and information around him, temptation and division.
I think that The Ticket wants us to compare and contrast James to the blind man in John 9. After James returns home, he even runs to an empty church. They both have testimonies, but the formerly blind men’s testimonies differ in content even though they both repeat their stories. John’s blind man responds to inquiries about the logistics of his healing and puts himself in danger for telling the truth or going to the temple. “I was blind but now I see!” James’ testimony is a joke. James does not discuss his blindness, but he was in debt and now he is not. James goes to the church and uses the blind to hide his unsolicited sales pitch to the poor. At best, he is beating his competitors and giving the poor some much needed liquidity. At worst, he is exploiting them by cloaking himself as a sheep in wolf’s clothing, which arguably he and the blind were doing anyway at a smaller scale back in the office. He definitely shares more qualities with the money changers in the temple than the blind man who used to beg at its gates, but he never gets ejected unlike his Biblical counterpart who is thrown out for telling his story.
I actually did not expect to enjoy The Ticket because it received poor reviews, but watched it anyway for Stevens. I think that they did not see the nuance of the story, which is predictable, and oversimplified the plot by judging the main character as bad. Reviewers seemed to equate his desire to look better, engage in different activities that he could not participate in while blind, take more initiative in his kid’s education and do better at work then enjoy the financial rewards as entirely superficial and negative. I definitely don’t think that James’ behavior is wholly beneficial and a lot of it is contemptible, but I think that other reviewers painted James’ post blind actions with too broad a brush and overlooked other characters’ flaws.
His ability to see reveals what he thinks he is missing in his life and reveals the character, good and bad, of those around him. His work friend, who is blind, has always been vocally envious of those who can see, but he was also jealous of James, which does not become apparent until the movie progresses. James actually tries to expand his friend’s career, especially after his repeated complaints that he could do more, but instead the friend tries to sabotage James. He may be objectively correct to think that a whistle should be blown, but his motivations are not benevolent.
James’ wife also reveals that she is kind of controlling, was withholding information, rejects James’ social desire to do new things (go to office gatherings, have nice dinners) and is willing to pretend to their son that James is the one excluding her from his new interests. Simultaneously as he is experiencing and initially rejecting temptation, she emotionally separates herself from James long before he leaves her. If it was not for her willingness to denigrate her husband to their son instead of admitting that she is refusing James’ invitations, I would agree with other reviewers that she is rejecting his materialistic ideas of a good time, but there seems to be a sense of inadequacy that she experiences when he and others can see her, which is insane since the idea that someone like Malin Akerman could even theoretically be considered dowdy or inadequate when compared to others is ridiculous. It is only after James stops trying to include her and rejects their old lifestyle that she begins some off screen soul searching and begins thinking about what she wants to do and how she wants to appear to others.
The Ticket fails to develop more backstory on James’ childhood. There is an unexplored contempt that James holds for his father’s unanswered prayers as he went blind, but it is a blink and you would miss it moment in the film. While I applaud the film for not spoon-feeding its audience, it is an important detail. When James tells the lottery joke, he is thinking of his father as the butt of his joke and as a cautionary tale for himself for failing to act. To James, God did not give him his vision, but he does fear that God is taking it away as a punishment for how he acted. If Jesus says that neither the blind man, nor his parents sinned, it can be true here when the inverse occurs. James may or may not sin, but blindness and vision displays the works of God. Yes, James failed when he did not do the works of God and simply served himself, but that was not why he was blind before or why he becomes blind again. Being blind is not a sin, failing to see is.