Blindness is Intense and Brilliant

Few movies demand to be described as lyrical as this one does…

Several months ago while going through a box of books I found a translated copy of José Saramago’s Blindness I didn’t realize I’d acquired somewhere along the way. Having seen the trailer for the movie some years ago I brought the book along on a train trip, figuring I’d have eight hours to get into the book and perhaps read it the whole way through. I barely got through the first two chapters, which made for a long train ride with nothing else to read. I couldn’t get into the writing style. At the time I blamed the translation, because there were long unbroken run-on sentences, where one sentence would contain about fifty comments. When researching this article, I discovered that this is Saramago’s writing style. If I had known beforehand I might have been more receptive to that style of writing, but at the time I found wading through the many commas to sort out what was going on frustrated.

However, the long, dreamy passages that so frustrated me on paper work beautifully in the 2008 movie adaptation of Blindness. Director Fernando Meirelles did a superb job of adapting the book to film, and he uses the film medium to its fullest extent to wring every last bit of emotion out of the audience. It’s been 24 hours since I watched the movie and I am still searching for a puppy to hug.

Set in an unnamed urban metropolis, the film follows a group of people who suddenly experience white blindness; their eyes are normal, but they are unable to see. A pre-Avengers Mark Ruffalo is one of those affected, although his wife (played to perfection by Julianne More) can still see. As the symptoms spread, more and more people are taken to a quarantined area and left to fend for themselves. What follows is a near-total breakdown of society, as people who aren’t used to depending on others must find a way to survive in conditions that break down into a state of Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Can you see this, motherfucker?

There are many things Blindness is not. It is not lighthearted, although there are moments of respite from the constant horrors screenwriter Don McKellar piles upon his characters. It is not titillating, although there is plenty of sex and nudity throughout the film. It is not gimmicky, although the cinematography is awash in light techniques designed to upset the audience and replicate the experience of being blind. And despite the movie’s calm, meditative moments, it is not boring or sleepy. I could compare it to a half a dozen other movies, but one of the odder parallels I found in the subject matter was its similarity to Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Like the characters in that movie, everyone in Blindness starts off normal only to devolve as their lives are reduced into struggle for survival.

One final note; I keep a personal list of movies I feel are superior to their novel counterparts. Until today that list consisted of two movies: Trainspotting and Sideways. The book Sideways was a first novel written by a former screenwriter and it shows in the writing. Trainspotting is another matter. While Irvine Welsh is one of my favorite authors, its constant use of Scottish brogue makes the novel unreadable. I had a similar reaction with Blindness. The movie removes the elements that made it difficult to enjoy the story and allows me to experience the author’s themes without making me struggle through pages and pages of solid text. Now, my list of films that are better than their books has grown to three.

tl;drs

Blank is a blanker version of blank: Blindness is a more modern, dystopian version of a Terrence Malick film.

Screen credits over/under: Under: one book author; one screenwriter.

Recommended if you like: Children of Men (also starring Julianne Moore), movies that leave you reduced to emotional goo

Better than I expected: Is it a cop-out to say everything? My expectations weren’t that high after my frustrating experience with the novel, but the film blew me away.

Worse than I hoped: While it wasn’t important to me to know (SPOILER ALERT) you never do find out how/why the blindness epidemic started, nor why it ends. This may upset movie watchers who like closure in their movies.

Blindness would work better as a(n): Not being a fan of the novel, I’d argue that this is the better version.

Verdict: Do you like your movies enchanting and intense? Then block out three hours of your day: two hours for watching Blindness and one hour (at least) for post-movie puppy hugging.