Blindness (2008)

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Cast: Yûsuke Iseya as First Blind Man, Jason Bermingham as Driver #1, Eduardo Semerjian as Concerned Pedestrian #1, Don McKellar as Thief, Ciça Meirelles as Driver #2, Antônio Fragoso as Concerned Pedestrian #2, Lilian Blanc as Concerned Pedestrian #3, Douglas Silva as Onlooker #1, Daniel Zettel as Onlooker #2, Yoshino Kimura as First Blind Man's Wife, Joe Pingue as Taxi Driver, Susan Coyne as Receptionist, Fabiana Guglielmetti as Mother of the Boy (as Fabiana Gugli), Mitchell Nye as Boy, Danny Glover as Man with Black Eye Patch

n the land of the blind, only Julianne Moore can see. A weird malady
has spread across an unnamed city that causes “white blindness” in the
afflicted. Moore plays the wife of an eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who
fakes having the disease so that she be quarantined with her husband
(and the other early sufferers). The patients quickly learn that
they’re on their own and that any attempts to leave the facility will
result in their being shot to death. As the only sighted person, Moore
literally sees the inmates/patients devolve into misery and must
somehow lead a small band of them to the presumed safety of the outside
world.

The movie begins rather strongly, as a young man is suddenly blinded
while driving on a busy city street. Disoriented, he is helped by a
passerby, who takes him home but steals his car. Meanwhile, an
ophthalmologist’s office begins to fill up with people experiencing
this odd blindness, not one of inky blackness but of complete
whiteness. The following morning, the doctor wakes up with the same
blindness, and the only way Mrs. Eye Doctor can go with him is by
pretending she too has the (apparently) infectious disease.

The patients are kept in maximum-security barracks and are given sparse
amounts of food that they must dole out to each other. But that’s the
extent of their outside help; armed guards surround the buildings and
shoot to kill anyone who tries to leave. (Lest they, you know, infect
normal people.) So it’s not long before the denizens of one section
(ward) decide they want more than their share, and anarchy ensues,
which is compounded by nearly everyone’s lack of sight. (The doctor’s
wife – everyone’s unnamed – keeps her own condition a secret from
everyone except her husband.) The movie is a metaphor for the hatred
within human beings for one another; it seeks to show that when the
chips are down, we are just animals, even if we suffer the same
indignities, because each of us wishes to be better than the next, to
dominate. We are not, the movie argues, a society built solely on
equality. It also seeks to show that there are different kinds of
blindness: physical blindness, and the blindness of man to the
suffering of his fellows.

Although the film is exquisitely well shot – from desolate city streets
to the unencumbered chaos within the compound’s walls – it’s
alternately slow moving and predictable. It’s easy to see what will
happen once the victims are quarantined, and it’s even easier to see
that the doctor’s wife will be the one to lead some of them out of the
morass. Although Moore is excellent as always (as are Ruffalo, Danny
Glover as an eye-patch-wearer, and Alice Braga as a blind hooker), her
character seems to be less a victim and accidental leader than a chosen
heroine, which runs contrary to the theme of everyday people simply
trying to survive without sight. Moore’s character, the only character
with sight, is presented as being a good person, but she is very slow
to stop what are obviously Very Bad Things being done to the blind.

Aside from the blindness angle, there isn’t much here to separate this
film from other personal-disaster films (to differentiate them from
natural-disaster films, which would include earthquakes, tidal waves,
and tornados), such as movies about plagues (28 Days Later), zombies
(Dawn of the Dead), or infectious diseases (Outbreak). The idea that
people would turn on each other even though they suffer together is not
new; neither is the idea of a society (in this case, an entire city)
abandoning those who all have some sort of disease. And because these
ideas aren’t new, Blindness isn’t as compelling as it ought to be; the
characters are generally one dimensional and unlikeable, so this isn’t
even much of a feel-good movie. To tell the truth, it’s a bit of a
lifeless downer, although the ending makes up for it a little.

A final note: The American Council of the Blind said, in deploring the
movie, that “blind people do not behave like uncivilized, animalized
creatures.” That’s simply a silly statement. Anyone can behave as an
uncivilized, animalized creature, particularly if they are treated as
animals and quarantined from “normal” society (which was the point of
the director, Fernando Meirelles); to believe that blind people are not
susceptible to anger, despair, and revenge is to believe that blindness
somehow connotes angelic heroism, which is unfair toward blind people
as well.