I don’t want to have to say it, but Fernando Meirelles’ “Blindness” made me wish I was, well, blind. And deaf. And confined to a hospital bed. I won’t call it a bad movie because it’s not a bad movie. It’s worse. “Blindness” is plagued with the “untapped potential syndrome” that inflicts all too many Hollywood thrillers. You’ve seen those movies – the ones whose first 45 minutes are so captivating they have you completely enthralled and wondering just how they’re ever going to get out of it, only to have the last 45 minutes make you wonder just how in the hell someone thought it was a good idea to waste money and time on producing this tripe. Universal blindness is a brilliant premise for an apocalypse movie, and this film was driving on its way to being a bleak, detached, and ravenous glimpse at the end of the world. But it missed its exit.
The movie, based on a novel by Portuguese author José Saramago, just keeps going and going, searching for a conclusion ripped from a page out of the oldest book in Hollywood. It tries to fill its viewers with an empowering optimism that adversity can bring people together instead of ripping them apart. But instead, “Blindness” finishes with an insultingly simplistic and completely unexplained resolution that leaves you scratching your head and pondering not how, but why: Why did I waste my time watching this half-baked, deeply flawed film that tries so hard for so long to be cutting and edgy only to end as soft and safe as a glass of warm milk?
“Blindness” starts off as traffic is halted in a metropolitan intersection. A man is randomly stricken blind, rendered helpless, and forced to depend on the assistance of strangers. As he is taken home to seek help and answers, he leaves a path of destruction as everyone he encounters becomes inflicted with blindness as well. This includes his eye doctor, played by Mark Ruffalo, who, though very cool, is forced to play a cowardly know-it-all failing to maintain order amidst the chaos. Ruffalo’s wife, played by Julianne Moore, is inexplicably unaffected by the illness.
The blindness plague soon becomes an epidemic the government attempts to counter by putting all those affected in a ramshackle, ill-equipped quarantine. Moore is still unaffected by the blindness, and she is the only person inside the quarantine who can see. After Ruffalo makes a weak attempt at being a diplomatic and democratic leader, a young bartender (Gael García Bernal) seizes control by blindly waving a gun around. He and his cronies take the food rations, forcing the others to pay for food with their valuable belongings. Things go from bad to worse, and eventually Moore rises up and uses her sight to kill people and set fires, so that she and her friends can get out of the quarantine alive.
And … freeze. Cut. Movie over. That’s all this film needed. But no, there were still 45 minutes left of schmoozy “together we conquer, divided we fall” Hollywood junk that is so poorly paced, and takes on such a different tone, it makes it seem like a completely different movie. The film finally ends with an obvious and unclever twist, seemingly in the hope that everybody will leave the theater feeling good.
But I didn’t feel good. I was too preoccupied wondering why Julianne Moore wasn’t affected by the blindness, because the movie sure as hell didn’t tell me.
The trailer for “Blindness” pulls the hook that it is “the most controversial film of the year.” Well, it’s not. But I get what they’re trying to say; the film is really, surprisingly, graphic, driving home the fact those who cannot see are blind to the ugly messes they create. “Blindness” features grizzly murders, brutal rape scenes, and blind people slipping on other blind people’s excrement. Enthralling stuff, I’ll give it credit for that.
I wanted to like this movie. I really did. But it just wouldn’t let me. The movie earned my trust with a rousing start, but it broke my heart with a dismal, directionless ending. Truly disappointing.
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“Blindness” turns a deaf ear to thrill-seeking audiences
Daily Emerald
October 4, 2008
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