"Blindness" (2008) - Movie Review

José Saramago, the author of the book of the same name did not sell the rights of the book in the fear of the material getting into some one who cannot really grasp the concept of a slow death of a disoriented clan and would become a spectacle of something indigestible to the viewers. With the film in an aspiring director’s mind, I find it hard to imagine what it would have taken Fernando Meirelles to convince the author that he will make the filthiness, despair, rape, desperate survival and the decline of humanism a digestible story. I am not sure how he did that but it has worked and in disgust and pain we go through the film, we are also able to clinically analyze the sociological conclusion out of it.

Nameless characters identified by their daily work are the victims of an epidemic blindness. We go through the first prejudicial and judgmental view of blindness as darkness and goes unnoticed of it even when we see the blindness the people go through are the flash of milky white brightness. In the idea of quarantine these people are condemned into a facility with menial provide of food and luxury. A doctor (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Julianne Moore), a prostitute with dark shade glasses (Alice Braga), a man with the black eye patch (Danny Glover) are some of the inmates in a ward. Soon other wards fill up. Julianne Moore’s character is the only immune human to this epidemic and she without a choice becomes a guide and provider of the unavailable, vision.

With guns pointing at the people who try to escape, the place becomes too much for the crowd. And without sight, things go ugly. Filthiness spreads as the patience and ability to find a spot for their routine of excretion and urination becomes highly tough. Food trays fly away and the clothes become soggy and congested. With time and emptiness, every one begins to develop a frustration and hopelessness. Among the blinded is the only person to see this despair and desolation, the wife of the doctor is been separated and becomes the provider for everyone. But it is not about her. The trouble starts when in one of the wards, a spooky weirdo proclaiming himself as the head of the ward (Gael García Bernal) begins to gain control over the food supply. He demands valuables with no idea of what to do with it. He has the power through a weapon. When the valuables go out, the next quench becomes the need for sex.

Marco Antônio Guimarães’ score played different notes both on the film and in my opinions. In the most depressing, saddening and sickening moments of the film, it evoked a sense of comic nature to it. It did not creep it out or provide a dramatization. It indifferently did not sync up but he redeems completely in the later part of the film. If hope can be taken form in the spreading of hands to the showering rain in “The Shawshank Redemption” with Thomas Newman’s music, here without the picture the tunes could take the image of hope in a brisk and rejuvenating energy.

People would be disgusted and let down terribly as the downfall of humanism is staged. Having seen films of apocalyptic nature, the beckoning of heroism in simplest method possible becomes an expected behaviour. Why not the character of Julianne Moore did not escape out? Why not some one rough up to the scenario of pure evil being orchestrated by the other ward people? Hollywood has created a false hope of human miracles in these kinds of films. Unfortunately it does not work that way. That is the mechanics of a society and the mob mentality. Our minds dynamics of manifestation of fear and the weariness it creates are hard nut to be cracked. And in situations such as this, the shell is thickened to enormous density to shun away from the mildest possibility of trouble since one has accepted the cruelty of their current situation and does not want to get more trouble with a high chance of death.

Once we come to terms with the stage set, everything becomes clearer and we in the midst of utter chaos of violence, abuse, rape and bestiality see the plausibility of a social declination in this current civilized world. We feel ashamed of the capability of humans as such which are visible in dire places and situations. The association of the daily life of doctor, receptionist or any one enclosed in the cocoon of comfortableness scares the deepest fear of demeaning us to unknown limits. Dignity, embarrassment, shyness, ugliness and every thing pertaining to vision and its tentacles of observant are evaporated. All left is the naked emotions of human tolerance and cruelty.

As with any depressing films, it is not easy to watch but Meirelles gives a dignified nauseating feeling towards the worst situation in the wards. The brightness and contrast manipulation to give a feel of an unimaginable blindness supports the view of an indifferent morality we develop during the course of the film. It takes a plunge in to the territory of chaos inside every human and it is not a likeable image we would want to see. But sometimes we should see the capability of our inner demons to shift the scale in desperate situations to learn there is a possibility of civilized behaviour. It would always be a dog eat dog world but when there is an image of a friendly dog eating a dead human that is the mark of complete demise of humanity. “Blindness” would disgust people not because it is a bad film. It is a visitation into the realm anyone normally would not take or judge themselves of those actions.