BLINDNESS begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters - his wife, his doctor (Mark Ruffalo), even the seemingly good Samaritan (Don McKellar) who gives him a lift home - will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As the contagion spreads, and panic and paranoia set in across the city, the newly blind victims of the "White Sickness" are rounded up and quarantined, while a cure is rapidly explored. But inside the quarantined hospital, there is one secret eyewitness: one woman (Julianne Moore) who pretends she is blind in order to stay beside her beloved husband (Ruffalo).
As all semblance of ordinary life in the hospital begins to break down, fuelled by Gael Garcia Bernal's lawless and depraved "King of Ward Three", the doctor's wife is armed with increasing courage and the will to survive. Gathering her makeshift family of seven people, she will guide them on a journey through horror and love, to break out of the hospital and into the devastated city where they may be the only hope left. Their journey shines a light on both the dangerous fragility of society and the exhilarating spirit of humanity.
No-one has rated this movie yet - be the first! You must be logged in to rate a movie.
"I left the cinema looking at everything in a completely different light"
This is what I've been waiting for! A truly twisted, arty, unique script with....wait for it...the budget to make it amazing!! I'm not kidding, after about 45 minutes of watching it all unfold I realised I hadn't even blinked. Once. Wow.
I'm going to assume that, like me, you haven't read the book, so I'll sum it all up for you. A mysterious blindness epidemic sweeps across a US city. No one knows where it's come from or how it spreads, but when it gets you, there's no going back - all you're left with is a white mist. Soon, victims are quvorantied in a disused mental health unit, with food rations and only their remaining senses for survival- if anyone attempts to escape, they get shot by the paranoid army keeping constant guard.
In terms of plot, Blindness is somewhere between Lord of the Flies and some kind of thriller horror. It examines how we live when race, sexuality, religion, job and all those little status symbols we use to distinguish ourselves become irrelevant in order to survive. Do we stick together, betray our neighbour...or do we simply give up?
The cinematography is incredible. Director Fernando Meirelles's goal was to really get the viewer to see the world through the charterers' eyes - rather tricky when they're blind. But he achieved it. The desperation, the constant confusion and the depressing grimness of it all were crystal clear.
I came out of the cinema looking at everything in a completely different light; I felt scared, confused and incredibly grateful all at the same time - this is without doubt one of my top films of the year.
