Film Reviews

Blindness

• Rating:
• Director: Fernando Meirelles
• Starring: Danny Glover
• Details: Canada/Brazil/Japan / 120 mins (15A).

Based on Jose Saramago's Nobel Prize winning novel, Blindness kicks off in a traffic jam just as a driver suddenly loses his sight. This never-explained blindness is highly contagious and soon runs riot throughout the city, with the infected quarantined in a rundown hospital where they have to fend for themselves. Among the victims is Ruffalo's optometrist, whose wife (Moore) is the only one who can see, albeit secretly, and she does her best to look after the 'patients'. With the number of blind rapidly increasing, the hospital falls apart with the wards fighting each other over the decreasing amount of rations.

The story is very theme-heavy as everything here is a metaphor: the hospital represents society and the breakdown of rules and the debauchery indulged in depict how close we are to animals (and consequently that civilisation is illusory); the blindness might be about our reluctance to 'see' the problems others have; the nameless characters are supposed to be all of us with Moore as the Christ character - someone who sees all and will lead the people from darkness into the light. Maybe. This is all fine and well but Meirelles isn't able to elevate his story above allegory, and if it weren't for the performances on show Blindness could grate and the end result is that its more of an interesting film than an enjoyable one. Thankfully he caught Julianne Moore on form, with Mark Ruffalo's typically effortless natural delivery in evidence again. Bernal, meanwhile, shows that he doesn't mind playing nasty characters, but there isn't enough of him.

Review by Gavin Burke