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Blindness
Director
Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener)
brings Jos� Saramago�s allegorical novel to the screen. At its heart,
the movie makes a speculative point about human nature and morality by
plastering us with questions� the sort of deep questions which no one
else can really answer for us and which we must spend a lot of time on.
Quite a simple scenario it is. People in a bustling city
randomly go blind. At first one, then the other, then more and more. To
make the narrative watchable and understandable, a small group of
infectees is cobbled together by merely having been in contact with each
other. They are deported to a disused medical facility where various
clans emerge. This hermetic microcosm is in fact a microscope for the
descent into chaos and the animal nature which civilisation perpetually
endeavours to suppress. The sense of right and wrong is decayed into one
of mere survival�to eat is to survive.
Yet a religious parable is always cherished, so the one
person with immunity from this white-blindness bug is The Doctor�s Wife
(Julianne Moore, very much in command). In the country of the blind, the
one-eyed (or two!) man (or woman) is indeed king (queen!). With her
obvious advantages, her group, which includes the women, is able to
out-manoeuvre the decidedly more dehumanised rivals, led by the
self-appointed (and somewhat Nietzschean) King of Ward Three (Gael
Garc�a Bernal).
The microcosm dissipates when its barriers crumble, but
saying any more will spoil it for you. I enjoyed the rich �meaning�
built into it by the writers and the director. True, it may be
over-handed and unnaturalistic for some tastes, but personally it�s a
rewarding watch. It is shot beautifully and has some tense
�suspense�-genre moments. Expect a lot of FADE TO WHITEs.
I also agree with some online comments. The Japanese
couple seem like a bit of an unwelcome overhand and an obvious producer
insertion (Japanese funds were apparently crucial in securing the
production). This is a minor concern in the grand scheme of sweep of
this ambitious and relevant metaphor. As the line goes: we have eyes,
but can we see? See Blindness for sure.
Extras include �A vision of Blindness� (a making-of) and
Deleted Scenes.
Felix Staica |
