Based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Jose Saramago and working from a screenplay by Don McKellar, Blindness is about a mysterious white blindness spreading through a city seemingly out of nowhere and without any medical explanation. A man [Yusuke Iseya] is driving and suddenly goes blind. His wife [Yoshino Kimura] takes him to an eye doctor [Mark Ruffalo] who then wakes up the next day thinking that this man has infected him yet his wife [Julianne Moore] never becomes infected. The first people affected are placed under quarantine and that becomes the compelling exercise in humanity. The doctor’s wife [Moore] can see. She does not want to leave her husband alone. It turns out to be the cruelest nightmare for her. It makes me think of Todd Hayne’s brilliant and freaky film Safe [if you want to be truly scared out of your skin put this film on your Netflix queue] when Julianne Moore’s character becomes more and more engulfed by a sterilized existence except that here it is complete chaos and she simultaneously has the most and the least control.
While some face the crisis by trying to bring about an orderly resolution, others have a more pirate-like, advantageous approach. The place becomes foul, dirty, disgusting, unlivable and violent within days and no one on the outside cares because they want to contain whatever is within. The small group that is quarantined tries to find small comfort in songs on a radio or sharing bits of found food but it may not be enough as the never ending darkness ravages their sanity, their trust and the wave of panic and despair that has spread throughout the city. Of course I can imagine how horrific it would be not to be able to see. But to be in a world where no one could see? A disaster and a nightmare. Exactly what Blindness turns out to be. Despite its great cast [Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Alice Braga], and some bizarrely gripping parts, there is a lot of muck to get through.
Grade: C+
Release Date: February 10, 2009
Miramax Films
‘);
Posted by Amy Steele 
