A Review of "Blindness" - Not for the Squeamish

Blindness
by Eric Sloss, Writer

 

Blindness is a malady that is greatly feared by the public.  If a choice was given, more people would probably choose to go deaf rather than blind.  At least with deafness, you can see read peoples lips to help with the condition.  Blindness robs people of seeing their loved ones face or watching a setting sun.  It is especially cruel for people who have seen all their lives and have this taken away from them.  It can be jarring and unnerving.  That is the premise of the movie, Blindness.  The movie examines what people do when they lose their sight and how they cope with it.  It is not an easy movie to sit through.

 

Brazilian director Fernando Meirellas helms Blindness.  He previously did the brilliant City of God and the well received The Constant Gardener.  Those two films were not simple movies that dealt in issues in black and white.  In City of God, the realm was the mean streets of Rio.  Meirellas showed how hard choices can be when all around you is crime.  Many times circumstances beyond your control dictate what path you take in life.  In Blindness, he shows mans inhumanity toward man.  People act differently when a calamity befalls them.  Some fall by the wayside.  Some take charge, while others get angry.

 

Blindness starts simply enough when a single person goes blind in traffic.  The man describes his vision as milky white.  Meirellas and his cinematographer Cesar Charlone do a great job throughout with the colors and shadings in the film.  You can feel the sensation of going blind and what this person might be seeing.

 

Soon there is an epidemic.  The blind are all hauled off to a facility.  The two main protagonists are an eye doctor and his wife.  They are played by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore.  Ruffalo treated the first blind man and was puzzled by his condition.  The next day Ruffalo was blind.  He doesnt know for sure if his patient caused his blindness or not.  Miraculously, Moore does not go blind.  She keeps this fact a secret when they are hauled off to the facility with other blind people.

 

The first five minutes of "Blindness"

Check out the first five minutes of the film and read our review while you're at it!..

Blindness DVD Review

Blindness (DVD) Directed by: Fernando Meirelles Written by: Don McKellar (screenplay), José Saramago (novel) Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal, Don McKellar We've seen plenty of movies about killer diseases that come close to wiping out the human race, but what if the world was suddenly struck by a plague that didn't kill people, and instead, stole their vision? How would the victims cope with this sudden disability, and how would the rest of society react? This is the premise to Jose Saramago's Nobel prize-winning novel Blindness, which has been brought to the big screen by director Fernando Mereilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener). With its intriguing concept and promising pedigree, a lot of people had high hopes for this ...

DVD: Blindness

Mathew Plale reviews "Blindness" Read More...

This Week on DVD: Soul Men, Blindness, W.

This week’s DVD release date is another dumping ground for movies that didn’t really find an audience in theatres… movies like Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, Oliver Stone’s W., the Bernie Mac comedy Soul Men and Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness. Blindness seems to be getting the shaft even on DVD as it didn’t receive a [...]

A Review of "Blindness" - Not for the Squeamish

Blindness
by Eric Sloss, Writer

 

Blindness is a malady that is greatly feared by the public.  If a choice was given, more people would probably choose to go deaf rather than blind.  At least with deafness, you can see read peoples lips to help with the condition.  Blindness robs people of seeing their loved ones face or watching a setting sun.  It is especially cruel for people who have seen all their lives and have this taken away from them.  It can be jarring and unnerving.  That is the premise of the movie, Blindness.  The movie examines what people do when they lose their sight and how they cope with it.  It is not an easy movie to sit through.

 

Brazilian director Fernando Meirellas helms Blindness.  He previously did the brilliant City of God and the well received The Constant Gardener.  Those two films were not simple movies that dealt in issues in black and white.  In City of God, the realm was the mean streets of Rio.  Meirellas showed how hard choices can be when all around you is crime.  Many times circumstances beyond your control dictate what path you take in life.  In Blindness, he shows mans inhumanity toward man.  People act differently when a calamity befalls them.  Some fall by the wayside.  Some take charge, while others get angry.

 

Blindness starts simply enough when a single person goes blind in traffic.  The man describes his vision as milky white.  Meirellas and his cinematographer Cesar Charlone do a great job throughout with the colors and shadings in the film.  You can feel the sensation of going blind and what this person might be seeing.

 

Soon there is an epidemic.  The blind are all hauled off to a facility.  The two main protagonists are an eye doctor and his wife.  They are played by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore.  Ruffalo treated the first blind man and was puzzled by his condition.  The next day Ruffalo was blind.  He doesnt know for sure if his patient caused his blindness or not.  Miraculously, Moore does not go blind.  She keeps this fact a secret when they are hauled off to the facility with other blind people.

 

The first five minutes of "Blindness"

Check out the first five minutes of the film and read our review while you're at it!..

Sundance Review: Blindness of the Woods

This is the first short I have reviewed at Sundance, but this one definitely deserves a review. It played in front of ‘Spring Breakdown’, and it was absolutely brilliant! The characters in the movie are all ...

Could BLINDNESS Really Happen? Five Doomsday Movies Ranked by Likelihood

Some of Hollywood's end-of-the-world scenarios are far-fetched, others are closer than you might think.

FilmCouch #90: Blindness, In Debt We Trust, Im Gonna Explode

The movies we watch this week may be grim, but they start some good conversations.