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List Price: $29.99 | | Label: MIRAMAX
Salesrank: 24164
Released: February 10, 2009 |
| Our Price: $4.68 |
| Used Price: $0.91 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A doctor's wife becomes the only person with the ability to see in a town where everyone is struck with a mysterious case of sudden blindness. She feigns illness in order to take care of her husband as her surrounding community breaks down into chaos and disorder. Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago.
Description of Blindness:
Based on José Saramago's allegorical novel, Blindness is a haunting film that works like an unusual fusion of fable and gritty suspense. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo star as an unnamed, married couple living in an unidentified city where a mass epidemic of blindness hits. Ruffalo's character, a doctor, is affected, but Moore's is not. When the two are transferred to a government-run quarantine facility complete with armed guards, they soon find themselves in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Criminals take over food distribution and extort possessions and sex from the innocent. Sanitation becomes a thing of the past. More subtly, rules that might govern one's judgement and behavior on an everyday basis simply vanish, and personal and collective values rewrite themselves. Moore's character hides the fact that she can see (except from her spouse), and thus becomes the audience's surrogate in the thick of so much misery. She also becomes an avenging angel at exactly the right time, and then a matriarch when the action shifts from the quarantine hell to the city's streets. The latter part of Blindness finds a handful of the inmates (played by Danny Glover and Alice Braga, among others) joining Moore and Ruffalo in a kind of post-apocalypse oasis, a chapter as touching as the previous chapters were nightmarish.
Director Fernando Meirelles deftly captures the film's spirit of mixed parable and horror, grounding the action but at the same time encouraging a viewer not to take it too literally. He honors Saramago's creative depiction of blindness not as a field of black but, in this case, as an ocean of white. He also does some tricky, disorienting things with the camera, shooting at odd angles, putting his frame around strange details in a scene--all of it has a way of giving a viewer a feeling of what it's like to perceive the world in a whole new way. --Tom Keogh
Blindness Reviews:
Not for the "Top Gun" fans though... 
2009-11-26 - What a great movie!
Extremely thought provoking and quite terrifying...
If you enjoyed the following movies then you'll probably get a kick out of "Blindness".
"The Happening"
"28 Days Later"
AND
"Silent Hill"
Worst Movie Ever Bar None 
2009-11-15 - This was easily the worst movie I have ever seen. The story and acting is laugh out loud ridiculous. The plot is a joke. I am not going to type in a long winded review of the plot. I am just warning you, this is two hours of your life you will never get back, disregard this warning at your own peril.
Thought-Provoking, Flawed, and Unpleasant, but with Good Performances 
2009-11-13 - I was originally intrigued by the idea of this film based on, strangely enough, the outrage it caused among those with vision impairment. The offense taken seemed to be based on the idea that, suddenly struck blind, society descends into savagery, and thus the film is saying that blind people are less "civilized" than those with sight.
After watching the film, I didn't see it that way. As has already been stated countless times by other reviewers, this is an allegorical film about humans' ability to brutalize one another -- indeed, their penchant for and willingness to embrace doing so. As is necessary in films of this type, a great many people are much more quick to victimize (or callously disregard the helplessness of) their fellow citizens than I think they truly would be, at least in the early stages of a society-wide plague. Why is it that filmmakers are so quick to see members of the military as unfeeling monsters only too happy to deny medical treatment to wounded prisoners, quick on the trigger and ill-prepared to cope with stress? This is a caricature of a stereotype, and this type of cheap characterization is only too common in the movie.
There are a few redeeming points. One character, a prostitute, is simply brilliantly done, both in her introduction to the viewer and in her sudden plight (not to mention how she is later utilized in the film, as a means of contrasting Julianne Moore's transformation from wife and lover to caretaker and mother (for Moore's film husband begins to resent her and eventually acts on this resentment). Danny Glover, a wise, one-eyed blind man (HA! SYMBOLISM!) is strangely underutilized, which is a shame, for there's depth to mine in his character's strangely cheerful reaction to the plague.
Certainly, elments of the "plague of blindness" bring to mind zombie films, from the quarantine of victims to the willingness of military personnel to shoot those so interned. The rest of the movie is simply a bleak meditation on the animal nature of people who are, for whatever reason, suddenly freed from the boundaries of polite society.
Some of the practical aspects of a world in which almost everyone is blind are disturbing and difficult to watch (or contemplate). Consider bathrooms that nobody can clean, or trash that nobody can see to clear away: it's a formula for filth and degradation when the blind inmates of the quarantine camp are left to fend for themselves.
Roger Ebert stated very plainly that he found "Blindness" extremely unpleasant to watch, from its distorted camera work to its intrusive, overly loud soundtrack. He wasn't wrong. The subject matter is equally hard to watch. The movie is, frankly, depressing and revolting, making it less than enjoyable but something bordering on interesting. It's worth watching for the performances of its actors, I guess, which were quite good (Mark Ruffalo, who seems flat at first, eventually proves quite capable and subtle in his portrayal of Moore's husband).
Those who enjoy entries in the "The End Of The World As We Know It" (TEOTWAWKI) genre will want to add it to their resumes of watched movies... but many more will, I think, be just as happy passing it up. I have to admit that, even now, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Is it a "good" movie? Not really. Is it well-executed? Only in part; it has deep flaws, ranging from its plot to its filmmaking. Is it thought-provoking? Most definitely.
Still a little blurry 
2009-11-06 - Pitch black basements covered over with spiderwebs; shadowy, mysterious corners; claustrophobic, foreboding caves; they all work to increase tension in a viewer because the basic sense of sight is the one on which we rely the most. Vision is our crutch. What would happen if we were all suddenly without sight?
An epidemic strikes fear in the populous as blindness spreads like a yawn. Those affected are quarantined into deplorably cramped and filthy conditions, leading to the ugly side of humanity rearing its instinctive head as preservation dominates decency and morality. When Ward 3 begins to assert their dominance over the other groups, forcing the weaker Wards to relinquish cherished valuables and sexual sanctity for the sake of survival (Ward 3 has all the food), it's up to the others - led by the only seeing person in the facility - to fight back and reclaim decency.
Helio San Miguel provides a powerfully allegorical picture of the human nature under the stress of societal implosion. In a brilliantly ironic twist, the resolution of the films displays to both the characters and the viewers how human depravity can sink the majority to subhuman, no, inhumane levels, and even the previously righteous may become wicked. It is only after the realization of our immorality that we are aware, that we can see. The concept itself is wonderfully thought provoking.
The problems with this film, however, are numerous, and most fall into the believability area. Even if this were even remotely possible, there is no way the afflicted would be isolated without medical study. Further, while the odds of infidelity in a completely blind world would definitely increase, the odds of the infidelity coming from a person married to the only woman with sight are remote. Much worse is the idea of a larger group in this sort of situation would allow a few malcontents to turn all others into milquetoast capable of allowing their women to willingly walk into a brutal gang rape.
Overall, I'd say that it's a brave attempt at the seemingly unwinnable endeavor of book-to-film transition. The camerawork - at times iridescent, at others irritating - could easily sway a viewer one way or another. The complete lack of any explanation, specifically the cause of the affliction, the conditions of isolation, and the magical, last-minute cure, hurt the concept's credibility. The result is just a bit fuzzy, but very entertaining.
Overkill
2009-11-04 - This movie poses a very important question:
why do some films get budgets instead of others?
I like a good sci-fi venture or apocalyptic ho-down or 'Lord of the Flies' frolic as much as the next guy, but the mountain of plausibility issues here aren't even worth acknowledging. If this plot worked in the book, great--it certainly doesn't stand on its own. Even more annoying, the film wasted some otherwise decent actors' time. I'm quite certain whoever made this film could have phoned up the sci-fi channel and gotten a list of standby extras that would have been more than sufficient for his or her purposes.
The most remarkable thing about this film is that I can't think of another film off the top of my head where the outtakes footage is probably far more entertaining than the actual film itself.
