Early Movie Review: Blindness

Blindness Opened the 2008 Cannes Film Festival to mixed Reviews

Sep 25, 2008

Fernando Meirelles's controversial new film made an impression on the Cannes audience this year but was it positive or negative?

In 2007, the Cannes Film Festival opened with Wong Kar Wai's beautiful and slow-moving romance, My Blueberry Nights. Some loved it and others hated it. In 2008, the Festival opened with another movie with mixed reactions, only this time a horror film revolving around a sudden epidemic of people going blind. The stunning red carpet for the first film of the Festival was littered with stars including Cate Blanchett, Eva Longoria, Dennis Hopper, Gillian Anderson, Faye Dunaway and Festival jury members Sean Penn and Natalie Portman. As for the cast of the film, star Julianne Moore walked with Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal. Blindness was nominated for the Golden Palm in Cannes, and it's premiere was anticipated by critics and audiences alike, but after the premiere, some watching left the Palais feeling confused and disgusted.

An American city is struck with a sudden case of its inhabitants going blind. One by one the population is hit with "white blindness," a highly contagious "disease" that the government does not understand. As soon as someone is diagnosed, government officials force them to live in an abandoned mental hospital with little food or necessities, let alone help. The people in the hospital include Doctor (Mark Ruffalo), Doctor's Wife (Julianne Moore), Woman with the Dark Glasses (Alice Braga), Man with the Black Eye Patch (Danny Glover) and the villainous King of Ward Three (Gael Garcia Bernal). While everyone wonders around without sight, the Doctor's Wife can still see and helps the others around the ward without them knowing her secret. While watching the filth and horrible conditions they're living in, she begins to yearn for blindness herself.

The Assessment: Opinion of Blindness (*Note* Review from premiere at Cannes Film Festival - film has been edited for a wide release audience)

Blindness opens by showing various strangers discovering they've gone blind. The characters are shocked and terrified beyond imagination. No one can explain what's happening. No doctors, no government agents, no one. Ruffalo is the Doctor who looks at patients' eyes and finds nothing wrong. Everyone describes a white light, so the epidemic is dubbed "white blindness." Soon Ruffalo is also hit with the illness, surprising his wife (played by Moore), who can still see perfectly fine. Ruffalo finds his way into the abandoned mental hospital with the rest of the blind patients, while Moore pretends to be blind too to stay with her husband and help him survive.

The rest of the film takes place in the small surroundings of a mental ward. Stark white walls. No color or decorations. No one can see but Moore. At first the group works well together in the extreme circumstances, Moore helping along the way with her sight. They create a system of ropes, leading to the bathroom and other places they need to get to. The group slowly gets to know each other, identifying with voices rather than faces and no real names are given, thus Doctor, Doctor's wife, etc. Soon the ward becomes overpopulated and split into different rooms, cramped and lacking in food. Moore watches the spirits die and her husband disintegrating in front of her eyes.

This middle portion of the film creates difficult images to watch and think about. Without simple sight and barely enough necessities to get by, those in the ward crumble and fall back into animalistic tendencies. The government keeps them contained and does not control the events, so the disabled citizens must take the situation into their own hands, which means fighting for rations of food and men attacking any women in the ward, most of these transgressions are led by the self-made villain, Gael Garcia Bernal. Moore continues to pretend she is like the rest, but she spends her time cleaning, organizing and caring for Ruffalo, who is also resorting to animalistic instincts revolving around nourishment and sex. The events that take place in this small ward are terrifying, tortuous and exhausting to watch as an audience. Some scenes go overboard, though editors could have cleaned up these instances now for an everyday theater crowd.

Through the horrific images, Moore acts her heart out as the Doctor's Wife, the only source of hope and help in this godforsaken world of the blind. Bernal easily slides into a menacing role of King of Ward Three who stops listening to his conscience and only pays attention to basic instincts. Glover gives a warm voice-over throughout the film, narrating Moore's triumphs and hardships. He is also present in the ward with the others. Based on a novel, Blindness contains many plot holes, possibly left up to interpretation but also frustrating, making it difficult to find the meaning or morals supposed to be proven in the story.

Meirelles might have attempted the impossible with Blindness. It's an incredibly difficult story with gut-wrenching events and themes. The direction seems off, and the film's score is oddly upbeat for such a dramatic story. Aesthetically, the bold white lights cast on most scenes fits the essence of "white blindness," and forces audiences to adjust their eyes upon exiting a dark theater juxtaposed with the white screen. The government's interaction with the patients and infectious plague is clearly skewed to the negative side, but Meirelles gives these agents very little screen time and it's hard to determine their viewpoint, including Sandra Oh's small role as the Minister of Health.

An intriguing idea is pushed too far here leaving Blindness an uncomfortable and confounded piece, though Moore is worth watching and the concept might be good to see if one can stomach it.

The copyright of the article Early Movie Review: Blindness in Film Dramas is owned by Mandy Rodgers. Permission to republish Early Movie Review: Blindness in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.