|
Blindness
Director
Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener)
brings José Saramago’s allegorical novel to the screen. At its heart,
the movie makes a speculative point about human nature and morality by
plastering us with questions… the sort of deep questions which no one
else can really answer for us and which we must spend a lot of time on.
Quite a simple scenario it is. People in a bustling city
randomly go blind. At first one, then the other, then more and more. To
make the narrative watchable and understandable, a small group of
infectees is cobbled together by merely having been in contact with each
other. They are deported to a disused medical facility where various
clans emerge. This hermetic microcosm is in fact a microscope for the
descent into chaos and the animal nature which civilisation perpetually
endeavours to suppress. The sense of right and wrong is decayed into one
of mere survival—to eat is to survive.
Yet a religious parable is always cherished, so the one
person with immunity from this white-blindness bug is The Doctor’s Wife
(Julianne Moore, very much in command). In the country of the blind, the
one-eyed (or two!) man (or woman) is indeed king (queen!). With her
obvious advantages, her group, which includes the women, is able to
out-manoeuvre the decidedly more dehumanised rivals, led by the
self-appointed (and somewhat Nietzschean) King of Ward Three (Gael
García Bernal).
The microcosm dissipates when its barriers crumble, but
saying any more will spoil it for you. I enjoyed the rich ‘meaning’
built into it by the writers and the director. True, it may be
over-handed and unnaturalistic for some tastes, but personally it’s a
rewarding watch. It is shot beautifully and has some tense
‘suspense’-genre moments. Expect a lot of FADE TO WHITEs.
I also agree with some online comments. The Japanese
couple seem like a bit of an unwelcome overhand and an obvious producer
insertion (Japanese funds were apparently crucial in securing the
production). This is a minor concern in the grand scheme of sweep of
this ambitious and relevant metaphor. As the line goes: we have eyes,
but can we see? See Blindness for sure.
Extras include “A vision of Blindness” (a making-of) and
Deleted Scenes.
Felix Staica |
