Blindness

(Brazil, Canada, Japan, 2008, 118 mins)

35mm

Selected Filmography:  

EXEC PRODS: Gail Egan, Simon Channing Williams, Tom Yoda, Akira Ishii, Victor Loewy
PRODS: Niv Fichman, Andrea Barata Ribeiro, Sonoko Sakai
SCR: Don McKellar, based on the novel by José Saramago
CAM: César Charlone
ED: Daniel Rezende
MUS: Marco Antônio Guirmarães, Uakti
Cast: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal, Alice Braga

What would happen if you woke up one morning and couldn't see anything? This is the premise of Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God), and adapted from Nobel prize-winner José Saramago's masterful novel by Don McKellar. When a mysterious pandemic descends upon an unnamed city without warning or reason, the entire population is plunged, not into darkness, but its opposite. The "white sickness" (so-called because its victims see only a milky blankness) institutes a state of virtual martial law. Under armed guard, those afflicted by the pandemic are rounded up and warehoused in bleak concentration camps. When a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) contracts the disease, his wife (Julianne Moore) accompanies him to the internment camp, despite the fact that she can still see. The fragility of human morality becomes terribly apparent when food supplies run low, and the inmates begin to turn on each other...

Blindness is, however, not an infinitely bleak view of the future. Taking its inspiration from Saramago's startling prose, Meirelles' film depicts the power of individual human courage in the face of the apocalypse. As civilization's landmarks literally dissolve, the film employs a palette leached of colour. POV shots from those stricken by the illness, become more than a metaphor for societal breakdown; they form a meditative and deeply philosophical view of what the human mind and soul is capable of perceiving. As a Virgil-like guide on this Dante-esque journey, Julianne Moore brings a luminous strength to her portrayal of a woman witness to the loss of all that is known and familiar. Danny Glover and Gael García Bernal also star.

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