Ryan McNeil
Deep down I wonder, how truly civilized are our civilizations? Everyone seems to get along just fine when most of us have the basic comforts. What would happen if our suburbs were reduced to slums? Or what if someone hijacked our food? How about if someone turned out the lights? Just how decent can one stay when other seemingly decent people have suddenly become killers, rapists, and thieves?
BLINDESS tries to give us an answer…and amazingly, it does so in strangely beautiful fashion.
BLINDNESS begins with a man who stops traffic. When a panicked driver won’t move his car, passers by try to see what’s wrong. They’re greeted by two words “I’m blind”. When he finally gets to an optomotrist (Mark Ruffalo), and describes his sudden vision of nothing but white, we learn that there is no physical reason why he can’t see. The next morning we learn something even more perplexing – the blindness is contagious.
The epidemic spreads, and the government acts swiftly. The first order of business is containment, so anyone who has gone blind is rounded up and quarentined in a decrepid, abandonned mental facility. Patient Zero is there, so too is the samaritan who pulled him from his car (Don McKellar). A prostitute has been brought in (Alice Braga), likewise a bartender (Gael Garcia Bernal), and an older man who is the witness to how bad things got (Danny Glover).
Of course the optomotrist is there too, as is his wife (Julianne Moore). However, not wanting to let her husband be taken alone, she fibbed her way into isolation – she can see just fine. As the governement forgets and forsakes them, the humanity of the blind interns goes south in a hurry. What is left is primal, dark, and vicious.
What will throw many people off about BLINDNESS, is the fact that for such a dark story, it is truly beautiful. Echoing the detail of the blindness being described as endless white, most of the film is very high-key photography. Never before has a run down psych facility seemed so painterly. Adding to the disturbing lovliness is an intriguing score. There is one tough scene in particular, where the screw is given another turn by an upbeat staccato melody. For a story that is very sensory, every sensory detail has been carefully crafted.
Every single cast member taps into the fear and uncertainty of the story amazingly well, but the movie really belongs to Gael Garcia Bernal. His character is best described as a rat bastard, and he plays him with such disgust that the performance becomes unforgettable. The devil inside him is a dark demon indeed, and he rallys his fellow blind interns to the dark side with an amazing amount of slithery charm.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles, who never met a sad story he didn’t love, does an admirable job of adapting the award winning novel of the same name courtesy of a screenplay by Don McKellar. The book is actually one of my very favorites, and I was quite moved to see so many startling visuals translated on the screen exactly as I’d imagined them. Despite all it’s visual brightness, let it be known – BLINDNESS is a very bleak story. It looks at our society, and how fragile our decency is in the face of adversity.
Thanks for your insight. I’m still struggling to understand how I feel about this film.
I have to be honest, I’m shocked that you thought so highly of this after having read the book. I did not read the book, but I couldn’t stand the movie, and I would only expect fans of the book to be outraged.
“For a story that is very sensory, every sensory detail has been carefully crafted.” Indeed – WAY too much, though, for my taste!
This is a fine and well-reasoned review, but a far cry from my experience with it. I’m hoping Meirelles heads back out to external society studies after this…
Once in a while this sort of situation happens to me…where I totally dig a movie a lot of other people hated.
I’m enjoying reading the very mixed reactions people are having to this flick, and of course getting the “You actually LIKED it?” comments.