Blindness
Article published: Sunday, December 7th 2008
Ragnor Ironpants reviews Blindness for MULE.
Film: Blindness
Dir: Fernando Meirelles
Length: 120 min
Mule Rating: ***
Blindness pits an unnamed doctor’s wife (Julianne Moore) and her husband (Mark Ruffalo) against a contagious allegory that gets spread a little too thin, as a sudden outbreak of a viral form of blindness takes hold across a fictional country. The government quarantines the affected in an old sanatorium, but as more and more inmates pour in, factionalism and exploitation break out as the facility comes to resemble a concentration camp.
Fortunately, Moore has kept the fact she can see secret from everyone, and becomes a sort of cross between Florence Nightingale and a pixie, surreptitiously putting up guide-ropes, helping people clean themselves and feeding her increasingly frustrated husband. Conditions reach breaking point when one odious clique take control of the food supply, and after a particularly unsettling scene the battle lines are drawn. So thank God the oppressed have a secret, fully sighted weapon!
The film is not as controversial as certain lobbyists seem to hold, arguing that it depicts the blind and blindness entirely negatively. They are missing the point, since the film is not really about blindness. It is about how thin a construct society really is, how easily we take things for granted and how the slightest disturbance can tip the balance between civilisation and savagery.
Finally, the plot suggests we are ultimately redeemed through love for our friends. But it is this message that is the main problem. Unlike Seeing – the sequel to the book on which Blindness is based, in which a confused and increasingly irate government is confronted by a general election in which the majority of participants have submitted blank ballots – there is little substance to either the illness that motivates the plot or the allegory it serves.
It compares unfavourably to Children of Men, a film that follows similar tracks but is meatier, with more direct parallels to our life today and a tighter focus on its target. In Blindness the lack of a more specific message steals any sharpness; despite strong performances (Moore and Ruffalo are excellent, as always) and admirable cinematography, its triteness is its downfall, making the proceedings look a little pompous and Moores lingering existential crisis in coming to terms with the responsibility of her secret sight mostly irritating.
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