Blindness [Theatrical Release] | ![Blindness [Theatrical Release]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41L%2BJq%2BU5zL._SL500_.jpg)
| Manufacturer: Miramax
Category: Theatrical Release
This item is no longer available
Rating:  52 reviews
Language: English (Unknown)
Region: 1
Number Of Discs: 1
ASIN: B0016Q8VBW
Theatrical Release Date: August 8, 2008
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Based on Jose 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
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Open your eyes and enjoy this excellent piece of thoughtful cinema June 23, 2009
Pastor of Disaster (Wexford, Ireland)
Once again, I am staggered by the "Chimps Parade" of people who ironically like the blind people in this film, require spoon feeding because they are incapable of having the wit to use their brains to fill the deliberate plot holes in this film themselves. You only have to see similar reviews of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy on this website to see the same types of grumbles from the sort of people who would be better off reading "The Beano", than indulging in serious intellectual pursuit. "Ooh, it doesn't tell me what the apocalypse was", "ooh, there isn't any punctuation", the same with this film, "ooh, why is everyone blind", ooh, why this, why that?". Pitiful.
Rant over! Deep breath. OK, as a scientist and a rationalist, I myself have sometimes had to take films or books to task for omissions in plot or continuity that genuinely ruin the film, usually in prequels and sequels that take liberties with the already defined paradigms that the plot should be built on. That being said, like The Road, it makes no real difference in "Blindness" to the story why people went blind, they just did. Accept it. This is not an essay on communicable diseases or an instructional and educational film on disease management, it is a social commentary on how ordinary people might act in extraordinary circumstances.
Ok, the Japanese "Patient Zero" does act with unusual calmness, and it might be considered unusual that the quarantined people are placed in an asylum to fend for themselves. How then the actions and motivations of the people unfold is the point of the story.
No-one can say that "There is no way that people would do that if.." How do you know? "There is no way that people would sit by whilst millions of their countrymen were systematically rounded up, had their human rights taken away and were gassed and incinerated". (Germany). "There is no way that neighbours would suddenly turn on each other and hack each other to death by the million" (Rwanda). "There is no way people would murder and rape their neighbours by the thousand in a modern country, no way". Did you ever go to Bosnia? 1996? Ifor? "There is no way that The Authorities would do this, that, the other..". Did any of you left in New Orleans after Katrina feel that The Authorities did a particularly fine job, or cover themselves with glory either before or immediately after the hurricane?
Of course, we would presume because we are bought up on Hollywood fantasies that "The Authorities" would handle the situation, and Hazmat teams and nice people from CDC would run nice lovely hospitals and sort everything out. But for reasons unknown, this doesn't happen in the film, and it doesn't matter. The blindness and the subsequent inaction of the authorities is just a vehicle to strip away the fundamental building blocks of society. That The Authorities will look after us, and that we can look after ourselves. Now imagine the Authorities wont look after us, and our ability to look after ourselves is removed by our lack of sight.
With all of that stripped away, we then have to fall back on our fortitude and strength of character. No-one knows how they will react in a disaster. Its easy to imagine that we will be the ones to take command and assume leadership, but experience shows that often a large majority of people will freeze, some become catatonic and not be able to deal with a situation like that. When something as fundamental as sight is removed, anything could happen.
This is the situation that faces our protagonists. Yes, I felt frustration that Julianne Moore's character did not make a better fist of things, that she allowed the women of the facility to be treated as they were, but she was overwhelmed by the situation and only snapped out of it when she hit rock bottom, and even then her actions might not have been considered terribly effective, but again, until we have been faced with similar trauma, we cannot judge her actions with any certainty.
"Why didn't the other wards gang up on ward three and fight them?" We might well ask "Why didn't inmates of the concentration camps attack their guards and escape?" The answer, fear?
I found the pace of the film slow, but the acting and direction top notch. It is an interesting and though-provoking analysis of the human condition and any higher allegorical meaning above that was lost on me, but that's ok. This is not a film for a Sunday afternoon with the granny, but as a piece of cinema, I rated it very highly.
 Great Book. Ok Production, Poor Adaptation. June 15, 2009
E. Acosta (Honduras)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Jose Saramago's Blindness is a brilliant masterpiece on human blindness. The theme of blindness is an allegory. This is not the sci-fi film some people (that didn't read the book, might I add) thought I would be, hence, the transient blindness suffered by the characters needs not be explained like a zombie pandemic.
Having said that, this movie is a straight, scene to scene adaptation from the book, and that's it's biggest weakness. Much of, if not absolutely all of Saramago's prose and poetry is lost, creating an austere and rustic feel. It doesn't leave clear the fact that you're watching a literary event. It's not the story you tell it's how well you tell it. And this retelling leave much to be desired.
Screenwriter takes the safest journey, from a to b leaving all the subtext and commentary of the human condition, which, is the book's main concern.
Also, production wise this movie is okay and nothing more. The actors are all top notch but the camera prefers to point at the production design and blur randomly and purposeless here and there. The attention given to the film's look is obvious from the very start but a dirtier look would have fitted it better. The white backdrop that affects the entire movie (a la THX) feels too gimmicky and is counterproductive to the story, as they never tie it in properly with the white blindness theme.
All of the remarkable political comment intended by the author is unfortunately utterly and completely gone.
Book adaptations never quiet satisfy everyone. I've seen very little cases where the film actually compares with the book (Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption, Michael Cunningham's The Hours come to mind) and I'm guessing this movie would have benefited from Fran Walsh or David Hare as screenwriters, or even a more humble production leaving the actor do what they do.
In conclusion, read the book even if you hated the movie. It's not bad but judging by the book's potential something grandiose could have come out of this.
The book is a fantastic read, at times funny, at times sad, always cunning, at moments even uncomfortable but overall a satisfying experience.
 Read the Book First June 10, 2009
Aleta Boddy (Portland, OR USA)
After reading many of the reviews for this movie, it has become clear that if you haven't read the book, you won't like the movie. You simply won't understand why they made the movie the way they did, why certain things are unexplained. It's because that's the way it is in the book! And believe you me, the book is incredible, and all the things that don't make sense come together to make an ultimate sense.
So please read it before giving an ignorant, yes ignorant, review of this movie.
 Completely idiotic, badly acted, and insipid. May 23, 2009
Maine Writer (Maine, USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's hard to bring myself to admit I watched this lame movie, let alone to write about it. It has plot holes so large the word "holes" fails to encompass them. It's full of stupid, silly imagery, treacly and nauseating cliches, lousy writing, characters without anything to recommend them (good or bad), and an ending that will make you vomit into your mouth. It makes Benjamin Button seem like art in comparison (and, boy, art it ain't). Everyone involved in this mess should be beaten senseless, metaphorically speaking.
Don't waste your time... May 19, 2009
Angela Schmidt (Knoxville, TN)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I think there was a message in this film, but the delivery was terrible. I wish I hadn't wasted my time watching this movie. I couldn't stand Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. I don't like that there is no explanation for why most everyone went blind. I couldn't stand the cinematography - it's not artful, it's annoying.
It started off good, and I thought it was going somewhere...but it flopped.
|
|
|
