On the face of it, the premise of Fernando Meirelles’ (City of God, The Constant Gardner) seems intriguing: an epidemic of white blindness sweeps the entire world, with no warning. In a short period of time, almost everyone is rendered blind and everyone is powerless to stop it. Soon, the only person left with the ability to see is a woman known only as the Doctor’s Wife (Julianne Moore). She and her husband The Doctor (Mark Ruffalo), keep her ability to see, a secret between them. When the blind are quarantined, and packed into cells like zoo animals, she feigns blindness to be near her husband.
Based on the 1995 Nobel Prize winning novel of the same name by Jose Saramago, Blindness opens with a man behind the wheel of a very expensive car. He suddenly sees nothing but a sea of white. This first man goes to see The Doctor, who wakes up the next morning afflicted with the same condition. From there, we follow the first group of affected citizens as they are dumped into quarantine. Living conditions are absolutely horrendous and eventually the area urns into a Lord of the Flies type society, with the most vicious inmates seizing control of the population.
Blindness paints a bleak and vile picture of humanity and society. Anyone who read Saramago’s novel, will recognize that the film stayed true to its inspiration in that aspect. The people, their clothes and their surroundings are filthy; it seems the dirtier they get, the further away they get from humanity and morph into animals. There are moments of brutal violence and rape; none of this film is likely to leave a very good taste in your mouth.
There are a lot of talented actors here, but almost all of them struggle to give a convincing performance. Scenes that are supposed to be gripping and emotional instead play out like high school drama class or a bad “B” movie. Screenwriter Don McKellar is best known for his solid work with Bruce McDonald, but here the dialogue is rather stilted and unnatural. The blindness of the characters also seems to be a distraction and limits the ability of the actors to play off of each other. Gael Garcia Bernal, for example, is usually fantastic, but here he’s laughable as a villain. Moore and Ruffalo do their best to bring some dimension to their characters but I think Mereilles, was the wrong choice to direct this film.
As he showed in City of God and the Constant Gardener, Mereilles is a very visual director. Shooting most of a film in the confines of one space is not where his best talents lie. The way Blindness is shot, it looks very similar to a stage play. There are moments you sense Mereilles really wanted to turner the film into a thriller but the script is too disjointed to maintain that tone.
While Blindness isn’t high on my list of recommendations, the film offers some fine performances, fascinating ideas about humanity and Fernando Meirelles is still a director worth watching.
The DVD from Miramax is quite good. The video transfer, watched upconverted on a Blu-ray player, is crystal clear. A lot of Blindness takes place in darkly lit areas and there’s never any difficulty making out any of the action. The audio is presented in 5.1 Surround Sound and is similarly just above average.
Blindness includes two special features – deleted scenes and “A Vision of Blindness,” a making-of documentary on the film. The documentary is nearly an hour and covers every aspect of production.
