Blindness Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 10.06.2008

How can a film about blindness show so much ugliness?

Directed by: Fernando Meirelles
Written by: Don McKellar

Starring:
Julianne Moore - Doctor's Wife
Mark Ruffalo - Doctor
Danny Glover - Man with Black Eye Patch
Gael García Bernal - Bartender/King of Ward Three
Alice Braga - Woman with Dark Glasses
Don McKellar - Thief
Sandra Oh - Minister of Health
Yusuke Iseya - First Blind Man
Yoshino Kimura - First Blind Man's Wife
Maury Chaykin - Accountant
Mitchell Nye - Boy
Susan Coyne - Receptionist
Martha Burns - Woman with Insomnia




Running Time: 120 minutes
Rated R for violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity

The image of society collapsing under the weight of crisis is one that’s been seen often in cinema, from dramas such as Children of Men to horror films like The Mist or, more popularly, the Romero Living Dead films. These films, which seem like a special subgenre of the apocalyptic/dystopian films, often revolve around disease or sudden worldwide disaster, and proceed to use this calamity to show how easily society can collapse around us. The true horror, these movies say, is not zombies, a flesh-eating or undead-creating disease, otherworldly creatures or any such epidemic. The true horror is us; it is mankind stripped of its civility within the collapse of government and technology…as the Joker says in The Dark Knight, “When the chips are down, these, uh…civilized people, they'll eat each other.”

As much as these films are a part of our cinematic consciousness, they are just as strong a part of literature. In 1995, Portuguese author José Saramago published Ensaio sobre a cegueira. Translated and published in English as Blindness in 1997, the tale of a blindness pandemic that strikes the world was a hit which, while drawing criticism from advocate groups for the blind, also contributed to him winning the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. A film adaptation was pursued for years, though Saramago guarded the rights for fear of the harshness of the theme being muted by Hollywood. He finally sold the rights after some conditions were set, and after a disastrous test screening as well as a poor showing at the Cannes Film Festival caused some edits to be made, the film has been released wide in theaters.

The film begins with a single, bizarre outbreak of blindness by a Japanese man (Iseya) driving along a busy street—much like the characters, the city has no name nor is it identifiable. From the first victim, the epidemic starts to spread to those he has contact with from a thief who takes advantage of him and steals his car (McKellar, who wrote the script) to the eye specialist who tries to treat him (Ruffalo). For whatever reason, the doctor’s wife (Moore) remains immune. Nonetheless, her love for her husband causes her to pass herself off as blind to accompany him when he’s taken away for quarantine as one of the first groups. The military forces them to remain inside, delivering food but refusing to offer any aid even when a man’s leg injury becomes infected. Soon, more people join them in the detention center, and the core group of Ward One forms around the doctor and his wife, the first victim and his wife (Kimura), a prostitute (Braga), a young boy (Nye), the thief and an old, eye-patched man (Glover). The doctor’s wife continues to hide her blindness, even when the members of Ward Three, who are much less about community then they are about “Every Ward for Itself,” take control of the food supply. Led by a former bartender (Bernal) who labels himself “The King of Ward Three,” he begins forcing the wards to pay for their food with jewelry and trinkets. When they run out of that, he finds other, less savory ways for them to pay. As condition spiral out of control within the detention center, the members of Ward One try desperately to find a way to survive, learning that doing so means compromising many of their values.

Blindness is, at its heart, an artistic film, one which tries to be art more than a commercially successful film. It is cast with largely unknowns, and those few actors like are known (such as Moore, Ruffalo and Glover) it takes no qualms with portraying in an unflattering light. I mean that quite literally; the film is lit starkly, attempting to portray the blindness epidemic—which in the film is differentiated from normal blindness by being a wash of whiteness rather than a cloak of black. The images are overexposed and awash in white, which gives everything a pallid look that is far from glamorous. It’s a clear stylistic choice from the director and some of the more intriguing aspects of the film are when the audience is presented with a blurry outline on a white screen in an attempt to give us a feel for what the character are experiencing. Luckily that’s about as far to being in the characters’ shoes as we get, because what happens to the characters is appalling. The script is stark and joyless as infidelity, theft, betrayal, rape, and murder are progressively drug into the detention facility. The worst of the crimes happen at the hands of the Ward Three inmates, but a fair number of morally questionable acts are committed by the heroes. The actions of Moore’s character in particular comes off as inexcusable, as in order for the theme of the film to progress, she has to allow all these things to happen and even submit to them. Her character could easily have prevented many of these, being the one seeing person—and more to the point, seeing person who is believed blind—in a facility full of the sightless. But instead, she does nothing until it’s too late, and the atrocities unfold around her. As the events unfold and things progress deeper into an abyss of inhumanity, the audience squirms but is left without anything redeeming for far too long. Even an act of vengeance by Moore, justified as it is, is portrayed as just another low that the inmates have stooped to. There’s nothing here but an utter condemnation of humanity. This would be fine if it was something original, but we’ve seen this theme far too many times, and the plot becomes an empty exercise in depravity.

As if to counterbalance the weakness in the plot, the acting is fair enough. Without any back stories to speak of or even names, the multicultural cast does wonders with their roles. Moore has always done well with strong women, and she makes the doctor’s wife a woman who does her best to be responsible, being the one person with vision and upon whom the fate of Ward One rests. Ruffalo is sympathetic, even when he’s being a fairly weak and uninteresting character by the confines of the script; similarly, Glover's eye patch-laden character comes off as warm and likable, even when he’s spouting off intellectual musings amidst the squalor. The best performance comes from Alice Braga, who lit up the screen in this year’s Redbelt, as the call girl who acts as a surrogate mother to the young boy. One of the few really powerful scenes involves Moore, Ruffalo and Braga, in which Moore’s character accepts Braga as a surrogate member of their family when she has every right to be furious. It is a tribute to the three actors that the scene comes off as well as it does, feeling emotional and poignant.

Unfortunately, that is also the problem with the rest of the movie. It's a composite of several poignant scenes amidst a sea of depravity. Saramago is well-known for his allegories, and post-apocalyptic films like these would seem a perfect fit for him. They’re less about the characters and events then the themes behind them. Unfortunately, the poignancy is often empty here, a hollow effect without a deeper meaning that the extreme nature of the film demands. When we see the characters later in the film become bathed by rain, they find it beautiful…and indeed, there is beauty in that moment. But beauty without meaning is just as hollow as depravity without meaning, and in the end, hollowness is unfortunately all this movie has to offer.

The 411: While it's full of good performances, powerful scenes and artistic choices, Blindness simply ends up being far too full of itself. The stream of beautiful scenes alternated with ugly and joyless wickedness is hollow and without any meaning we haven't seen before, and the end result is a stark and thoroughly unenjoyable two hours. The cast deserves far better then this, as do audiences and the art house film industry as a whole, both of whom suffer from the movie's attempt to be a "deep" movie rather then a satisfying one. There are much better films for someone wanting to see the collapse of society when the chips are down, and I recommend you go see them.

Final Score:  4.0   [ Poor ]