[Patrick Sun]

This film's premise: bad things happen when a group of quarantined people, all of whom have been stricken with a form of white blindness, decide to to engage in horrific acts for their own amusement and show of power over the other groups of blind people, even though it's all these blind people being bad to other blind people? Wha? The premise is even dumber because one of the people quarantined isn't even blind (Julianne Moore's character), but follows her husband to this quarantine hellhole. I kept asking myself, if I were sighted amongst a group of blind people, why wouldn't I exploit that advantage when groups of them decide to act like true a-holes? It was aggravating to watch, and the horrific scenes were just mindnumbingly written to get from A to B when a sighted woman could have done so much to the a-holes if she had half a brain. There isn't any real moral that can be readily gleamed from the story of the film, and it just stumbled badly to its
conclusion.

I still can't believe Fernando Meirelles thought this was a story worthy of his directorial attention.

I give it 1.75 stars, or a grade of D+.

[Robert Crawford]

This thread is now the Official Review Thread for "Blindness". Please post all HTF member reviews in this thread.

Any other comments, links to other reviews, or discussion items will be deleted from this thread without warning!

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Crawdaddy

[Kirk Tsai]

This was a very tough film, both in its form and content. Meirelles pushed the edge here stylistically in its extended shots of darkness and whiteness, not to mention off center and focus compositions. I can't say his choices gave me much pleasure, but (a) that's not his intention, and (b) makes the last shot of the film quite powerful.

If there were to be a subtitle of the film, I think The Passion of the Doctor's Wife would be fine. As much as others suffer, it's Julianne Moore's character that does the most in the movie, even with her sight intact. She sees all the horrors, sacrifices herself at every step, and has the burden of making choices that only she could. I had some of the same thoughts that Patrick had--"she could be doing X in this situation"--but I think the point was that she only choose to commit violence after she gave cooperation all the chance that she could, even if the other side didn't merit it. She is a saintly figure.

The relentless ugliness of the prison/quarantine section of the film is not pleasant. The movie paints human nature pessimistically in a large societal context; but in small groups, there is a chance for empathy and cooperation. I'm rambling with randon thoughts, but that's why although this is not a movie high on the repeat viewing list, I'm glad to have seen it.