At first glance, Blindness appears to be another disaster film, such as 28 Days Later or Children of Men, that focuses on a worldwide epidemic, but it is of a different breed entirely. Based on the Jos’eacute; Saramago novel of the same name, Blindness is less post-apocalyptic thriller and more metaphor: an examination of the human condition pondering the notion of the figurative blindness we all tend to exhibit toward our fellow man becoming a literal one.
It’s an ambitious concept to tackle in the medium of film, but despite the critical acclaim enjoyed by its literary counterpart, Blindness has trouble translating its message effectively to the big screen.
While it is not immediately noticeable, eventually one realizes the film has no given location, time period, or names to any of its characters. This might be an effective technique in written form, but whatever advantages such a nebulous framework had in the novel fail to work in the film.
The protagonist of the film is the character played by Julianne Moore, who is the only person to retain her sight when a mass pandemic of blindness sweeps throughout the populous. What’s odd about this blindness, however, is that instead of causing its victims to see only darkness, it transforms their vision into a milky haze of white. To further add to the mystery, the cause of the blindness is impossible to identify, and it is unclear how it spreads from person to person.
Audiences are as in the dark (or should that be in the white?) about the specifics of the blindness as the characters are, as no explanation is ever given, scientific or otherwise, as to the source of the milky-hazed vision. Being a story of symbolism, one would have at least expected a metaphorical attempt to explain the phenomenon.
The government’s initial reaction is to round up those afflicted by the blindness for quarantine. When they come for the protagonist’s husband (Mark Ruffalo), she refuses to leave his side and pretends to be blind herself so they can stay together.
Once at the quarantine facility, she uses her sight to her advantage, doing the best she can to help the hundreds of others who cannot see for themselves. As time goes on, the conditions continue to degrade, and animosity develops between the different wards of the facility.
Eventually one faction of particularly despicable individuals (lead by the character played by Gael Garc’iacute;a Bernal) takes control of the food supply, forcing the other factions to exchange their valuables for food, and when their valuables run out, their women.
This is where the film earns it’s R-rating in full, with extremely graphic and disturbing sexual imagery, including borderline rape. It is questionable whether such intense images and situations were necessary to relay the circumstances. The logic behind the events is sound, as humans have a tendency to revert to their basic instincts when left to themselves (see Lord of the Flies), but these scenes overpower almost everything else in the film and haunt the viewer long after its conclusion.
Those quarantined in the facility ultimately escape once the government infrastructure collapses and is no longer able to hold them there, but what they find in the outside world is no better. The film does end with a vague glimmer of hope, but after witnessing the brutal degradation of society it is difficult for one to retain any level of optimism.
Blindness is unashamedly allegorical – it makes no attempt to answer questions of who, when, where or why, but merely what, and leaves interpretations to the audience. Unfortunately, the film fails to properly articulate many of the lofty concepts presented by the narrative and would probably have best been left as a novel for readers to judge on its own merit.
