I like movies about the meaning of life. Yes, they lack action, no special effects, no slick plots... just down-to-earth conversations.It's a bit odd that Finn (David Strathairn) romps about town with encyclopedias in his little red wagon, but that's the point. The movie is slow for a reason. The images drive this movie as much as the characters. Each visual is as deep as the dialog.The way Finn stops and wonders, the expressions on his face, his pauses in dialog... . The character of Finn would be a hard one to portray, but Strathairn provides a wonderful performance. Hats off to whoever cast him for the part.

The opening shot thrilled me—for a rather personal reason. I recognized the scene as the one that's been fascinating my brother and me since we were kids. It's an old stone barn we used to drive past on the way to visit our grandfather.After admiring the barn, I realized that nothing was really happening. Nothing much, anyway. I waited while the movie's dawn turned to daylight around the barn and the morning mists burned off. I began to wish I hadn't bought it.But it gets better. We meet a man named Finn (David Strathairn) and watch as he tells his wife he's going away. Finn seems to be tortured and have a driving need to search for some sort of answer. His message is ambiguous and almost confusing--as it should be.In another scene, two guys come together to wash cars, and they're discussing the fact that one is working and the other is not. But there are three guys there, and the third one isn't working, either. And he's wearing a suit. I wondered why. And I wondered why, in the age of the internet, Finn decides to go-to-door selling encyclopedias.Eventually I learned that the third guy is a ghost. It's not that this is a 'paranormal' movie. It's just that Finn's burden of unresolved tragedy is as real to him as any physical presence could be. The people around him can't see the ghost—most of them, anyway. What they can see, can touch, are the encyclopedias.Finn is not glamorous. He's not fabulous. He's not even successful or collected or sexy, at least in the classic sense. He's real. In fact, he's so real, so imperfect, so nakedly human that I relate to him. I identify. I feel."The Sensation of Sight" contains no pat answers. It depicts life, complete with anxieties and uncertainties. But it leaves us with a sense that we need not be its victims: we can be its participants.

Imagine that a high-school drama teacher assigns each of his class members to write a script. Rules? A small town; people with various anxieties.Do whatever you like.Then, bring the cast together to exchange scripts (no editing needed); then go. So you act out someone else's script and then periodically the drama teacher points to 2 of you and says "scene" - they come together and ad lib.The Sensation of Sight isn't close to this good. It's the worst kind of semi-experimental semi-exploratory, uh, drama.It's unwatchable.Amazing though because the protagonist and others in the cast are decent actors.

I was able to see 'The Sensation of Sight' when it opened in New York City two weeks ago and I became immediately enraptured by its honesty. Aaron Wiederspahn's screen glows with a certain purity of heart which is exactly what makes this film so different and unique... The lighting is beautiful and the music is used very effectively... Every shot is carefully composed with great attention to detail. The subtle intimate relationships between characters with conflicting needs and how they open up to one another is what makes this film so special to me aside from being technically flawless. The performances are top notch! I highly recommend it.