A young man getting his eyes tested has a flashback to a period when he was in school and, while a girl with glasses read a beloved poem in front of the class, all he could do was mock her and, while her vision was impaired, she could see clearer than he could.
Although the plot summary makes it sound a bit twee and pat and, while it does lean towards sentimental beauty, it is more or less built on a solid base of reflection that mostly works. The film is about vision, whether it be backwards in retrospect, seeing the beauty in art, seeing the good in others or just plain seeing what is in front of you. The poem works well in this context and it is nicely delivered throughout. The one issue I did have with the plot was that the man "looking back" still looked like a kid to me and this did rather reduce the impact of the retrospective aspect indeed it took me a minute to realize that it was structured this way since I presumed one event must be very close to the other.
That aside it does work but I would understand if people felt like it was too worthy because there is an air of self-created "beauty" and value that seems to have been made rather than just come naturally. This grated on me slightly through the look, feel and soundtrack to the film, but mostly the connection of vision and the poetry carried it through. Although they feed into the "slow worthy" air, both James and Morrissey are solidly good.
