The adept affair about the movie version of Blindness is how much it makes you appreciate the transcendent novel by Jose Saramago . The book takes a potentially hackneyed story — everyone proceed blind , except for one woman — and turns it into a jarring face at how anything can become normal . At its adept , the pic , directed by Fernando Meirelles ( City Of God ) , conveys a lot of the book ’s sordidness and lovingness . But Meirelles ’ seek to infuse more dramatic play into an already intense book wind up backfiring . Spoilers below . I regain myself pondering , after watching the flick , if it was even possible to film Blindness . excellently , Saramago resisted let anybody have the movie rights for years , and Meirelles and writer Don McKellar buttonhole over and over again to make it into a film . They say Saramago ’s reluctance was due to the fact that he did n’t require the account book made into an “ exploitation film , ” and I ’m sure that ’s part of it . But it ’s also such a quirky , weird Bible , that I ’m at a loss to think how you could make a successful pic of it .
The matter I liked most about the movie was that it overdraw the report from the book , that the social order can build itself in very unlike ways , reckon on how the chips fall . When the blindness epidemic first strikes , an ophthalmologist and his patient are the first mass to be strike ill . They all wind up quarantine inside a variety of dorm room , with armed guard keeping them inside . The doctor ’s wife comes along , even though she restrain her sight the entire time . Here ’s what I got more clearly from the movie than the ledger : in Ward 1 , where the doctor and his wife are lam up , there ’s a railcar stealer . He go unreasoning because he helped the first victim of the epidemic , and then stole the victim ’s car . There ’s a minute where the car thief assay to take charge over everyone else in Ward 1 , basically saying that everyone should kiss his backside . He gets shoot down , and alternatively the Doctor of the Church and his wife end up being in charge . ( And the car thief by and by dies . ) That means the people in Ward 1 mostly survive . Meanwhile , Ward 3 puts a total buttwad in commission — the ego - proclaimed “ King of Ward 3 , ” who ’s not that different from the machine thief — and in the remainder , the citizenry in Ward 3 all die as a resultant . But you’re able to see how end the people in Ward 1 amount to letting the car stealer become the King of Ward 1 , and it ’s fascinating and a little shivery . The difference between hold open a semblance of civilisation and turn into full barbarians is pretty little , especially when the norms of order have break down .
In the movie , as in the book , the content is that people can adapt to anything . And this becomes a blessing as well as a curse . Eventually , the multitude in Ward 3 slip all of the mental hospital ’s food provision , and they demand all the other wards ’ women . If Ward 1 does n’t turn over its women for the Ward 3 men to rape , everyone in Ward 1 will thirst . In the end , everyone in Ward 1 becomes complict in the rape of the Barbara Ward ’s women , and it ’s torturesome to watch them verbalise themselves into seeing it as okay . ( Random digression : It ’s interesting — writer have often treated blindness as a suitable lapse into sensualism and aboriginal vigor . Maybe because writer are so dependent on their centre , they contrariwise fantasize about how wonderful it would be to lose them . In D.H. Lawrence ’s tarradiddle “ The Blind Man , ” the boisterous sensualist Maurice gains a uncanny animalistic power from being blinded in Flanders , and he utterly terrifies the decadent intellect , Bertie , who had been a rival for Maurice ’s married woman ’s affections . In V.S. Pritchett ’s taradiddle , “ Blind Love , ” a unsighted man becomes a cleaning lady ’s ideal lover because he memorizes her body with his fingers and because he ca n’t see her birthmark . But the idea of mass cecity as a metaphor for the way hoi polloi conspire in dehumanizing systems is sort of a reversal of Lawrence and Pritchett treating the subterfuge as the only lawful someone . )
I kept live back and off with myself about what the book had that the movie lack . Here ’s what I last came up with : the book is newsy . It ’s like your cubicle - mate who wants to talk about every point of their weekend . It ’s just jam - packed with neurotic , running dialog , that never even pause . One of the idiosyncrasy of the book is that the dialog is just separated with commas , with judgment of conviction pass together . The record ’s tale voice is so potent — nattering , going on piddling divagation , recounting onetime proverbs , and sort of clack its spit all the metre — and you ca n’t have that in a movie . That natter style creates the sense of a communal “ Grecian chorus , ” made up of the narrator and the random characters , who are all talking at once . In a book that ’s all about how a group of newly blinded strangers connect together to form a community , either for good or ill , this anon. chatter reinforces the sentiency that “ society ” is lecture to you . Most significantly , it fall in a weird sense of warmth , the feeling that even though you ’re reading about horrible squalor and barbarism , there ’s still an undertide of kindness in this invariant communication . I do n’t know how you could bring that upshot in a movie . Maybe by having citizenry talking very tight , over each other , and with lot of neurotic chatter . It sort of makes sense to me that hoi polloi who were navigate by sound and signature , without a sense of deal , would talk a mint as a way of recover each other . Which may be why they render possess a Danny Glover representative - over in an early gash of the flick , to give that superfluous layer of narrative voice . There ’s one short section of Glover ’s phonation - over left in the movie , and it ’s pretty awful . I ca n’t imagine how bad the movie would be if Glover was recite throughout . In any case , the last cut of the movie goes for the standard art - pic discussion , with lots of long pause and silences , and glowering medicine . Meirelles uses lots and lot of photographic camera tricks to try and convey the disorientation of most of the mass in the movie being unsighted , and it ’s often super effective . The photographic camera focuses and unfocuses , the screen turns overexposed then underexposed . In the scene where Ruffalo run low blind , he ’s blurry and Julianne Moore is in focus . Things go white and blotchy at random , and the scary visuals reinforce the picture show ’s claustrophobic motif pretty well . The existent scene where the men of Ward 3 rape the charwoman of Ward 1 is totally abstract . It all works fairly well , in component , but for some reason I had a hard time touch base with a lot of the character .
There are a few intellect for this . One major job is that I never get a sense that the doctor ( Mark Ruffalo ) and his married woman ( Julianne Moore ) actually liked each other . He ’s rude and dismissive towards her before he goes blind , which was n’t the vitrine in the book . And after he goes blind and she keep her sight , he ’s alternately whiny and jerky towards her . In the Good Book , they deal a good deal of warmness , even after the doctor cheats on his married woman . In the movie , I got the mother wit they ’d rather not be in the same way together . I had a sneaking opinion this was an endeavor to wring more drama out of the story , which seemed mistaken — because a nation of unsighted people starving and stumbling around naked in their own filth ? Not really lacking in dramatic play . I ’ve liked Ruffalo in other thing , but in Blindness he grates pretty gravely . I felt like one of the book ’s chief excited lynchpin , the kinship between the MD and his married woman , was entirely missing . ( When I got tointerviewMeirelles in the first place today , he advert that they wanted to give the physician and his wife more of an “ arc ” from have a broken man and wife to rediscover each other , but this felt like a really uncollectible decision in practice . ) Glover , meanwhile , sense somewhat miscast as the “ one-time man with an patch . ” His performance just did n’t work at all . I think he was going for sweet and folksy , and he overshot . I feel like I ’ve seen Gael Garcia Bernal be practiced in other thing , but he ’s way too over the top as the King of Ward 3 — it ’s like they send away the villain from Nine dying Of The Ninja into this moving-picture show .
The standout performance in the movie is Julianne Moore , who totally brings the graphic symbol of the doctor ’s wife live . mayhap because she ’s the only actor allowed to act with her optic in the film , or mayhap just because she keeps a sense of severely - gain gravitas as thing get more and more sordid in the filth - strewn asylum . Her rage is cool down , and her grief during and after the rape scene is pretty overwhelming . She ’s in a much well pic than the rest of the cast , A - list though many of them are . really , there ’s one other standout performance in the celluloid , and it ’s one of the few great melioration over the Word of God . In the record book , the Ward 3 loss leader ’s main accomplice is an accountant , who was really blind since birth and wound up in quarantine by fault . The “ blind accountant ” is a pretty minor form in the book , who tries to fall in hospital ward 1 at one level , but then changes his nous . But in the movie , play by Maury Chaykin , he becomes the most interesting character . He ’s obviously deep conflicted about helping Ward 3 slip everyone else ’s food , but then he finds a way to rationalize it by being exaggeratedly courtly . When he helps to organize the gang rape of the Ward 1 women , he assign on a weird facade of gallantry . He treat it like a fun date — they ’re not really bunch - raping those womanhood , they ’re just appreciating them and call them “ ladies . ” All through the ravishment scene , where woman are scream out with infliction and horror , you hear the accountant being horribly genteel and say thing loudly like , “ May I affect your nipple please ? ” It ’s totally revolting and yet absolutely credible — people do what they have to do to rationalize their cold conduct . I care the movie had require more chances like that .
In the end , the picture has a lot of attractively shot scenes , and it channel the book ’s obscure themes about society moderately well . But because I could n’t connect with most of the fiber , it felt a fiddling bit empty to me , like I was watching an anonymous horror show . And then the last half hour of the photographic film fizzles a bit . Major spoiler : at the remainder of both the record and the movie , the blind people pull up stakes their asylum and discover that the external world is just as bad . Everyone ’s buy the farm blind and hoi polloi have been trim back to scavenging animals . In the book , it ’s a pretty atrocious breakthrough . In the motion picture , once you lose the claustrophobia of the closed - in asylum scenes , the importunity goes out of the tale . Instead of a actualization that living outside the psychiatric hospital , with dwindling food stores around town and gangs of feral creature and humans , will be increasingly unsustainable , the movie goes a bit soft and there ’s a lot of saltation in the rain and stuff . It palpate as though the trial by ordeal is over when they get out of the asylum , but then the moving-picture show locomote on for another half an hour . ( And pocket-size quibble , but one of the nicest minute in the book , where a stray dog licks away the Dr. ’s married woman ’s tears , is totally ruined in the movie because two outcome are collapsed together . In the Good Book , the dog thrash her tears and becomes her friend , and then 20 or 30 Page later , you see wienerwurst eating a bushed human body . In the motion-picture show , the two scenes are combined into one , leaving you feeling as though she ’s being licked by a tongue that was just nosh on human flesh a consequence ago . The movie also lose the character of the selfish old woman , who provides a lot of the last subdivision ’s pathos and horror . ) Bottom line : If you love the book , you ’ll find the film an interesting take on its report , but a bit of a rent - down in the ending . If you hate the book , you ’ll definitely hate the picture show . And if you have n’t read the book , I ’m really not sure how much you ’ll get out of the plastic film . It may be deserving insure just for honour - worthy performances from Julianne Moore and Maury Chaykin .
BlindnessGawkerJulianne Moore
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture tidings in your inbox day by day .
newsworthiness from the future , deliver to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
