Blindness (2008 film)

The film begins with a young professional suddenly going blind in his car while at an intersection, with his field of vision turning white.As more blinded people are crammed into what has become a concentration camp, overcrowding and lack of outside support cause hygiene and living conditions to quickly degrade.Anxiety over the availability of food undermines morale and introduces conflict between the prison's wards, as the soldiers who guard the camp become increasingly hostile.Independently, other raped women sneak to the dead king's ward and set it on fire, which rapidly engulfs the building, with many inmates dying in the ensuing chaos.She discovers a well-stocked basement storeroom beneath a grocery store, barely escaping with aid from her husband when the throng around her smell the fresh food she is carrying.Producer Niv Fichman explained Meirelles' intent: "He was inspired by [Saramago's] great masterwork to create a microcosm of the world.[9] Saramago explained, "I always resisted because it's a violent book about social degradation, rape, and I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands."McKellar believed they had succeeded where others had failed because they properly researched Saramago; he was suspicious of the film industry and had therefore resisted other studios' efforts to obtain the rights through large sums of money alone.McKellar noted, "He said she became aware of the responsibility that comes with seeing gradually, first to herself, then to her husband, then to her small family, then her ward, and finally to the world where she has to create a new civilization."Blindness, budgeted at $25 million as part of a Brazilian and Canadian co-production, was slated to begin filming in summer 2007 in the towns of São Paulo and Guelph.[22] São Paulo served as the primary backdrop for Blindness, as it is a city mostly unfamiliar to North American and European audiences."[23] Similar to the book, blindness in the film serves as a metaphor for human nature's dark side: "prejudice, selfishness, violence and willful indifference.The director began with an omniscient vantage point, transited to the intact viewpoint of the doctor's wife, and changed again to the Man with the Black Eye Patch, who connects the quarantined to the outside world with stories.Meirelles described the intent: "It's about image, the film, and vision, so I thought it makes sense to create, not a history of painting, because it's not, but having different ways of seeing things, from Rembrandt to these very contemporary artists.[24] Meirelles explained his goal, "When I shot and edited these scenes, I did it in a very technical way, I worried about how to light it and so on, and I lost the sense of their brutality."[12] He also found that a New York City test screening expressed concern about a victim in the film failing to take revenge; Meirelles ascribed this as a reflection of what Americans have learned to expect in their cinema.The consensus on the website reads, "This allegorical disaster film about society's reaction to mass blindness is mottled and self-satisfied; provocative but not as interesting as its premise implies."[38] Justin Chang of Variety described the film: "Blindness emerges onscreen both overdressed and undermotivated, scrupulously hitting the novel's beats yet barely approximating, so to speak, its vision."Despite the praise, Garrett wrote that Meirelles' talent at portraying real-life injustice in City of God and The Constant Gardener did not suit him for directing the "heightened reality" of Saramago's social commentary.[42] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it "an intelligent, tightly constructed, supremely confident adaptation": "Meirelles, along with screenwriter Don McKellar and cinematographer Cesar Charlone, have created an elegant, gripping and visually outstanding film.It responds to the novel's notes of apocalypse and dystopia, and its disclosure of a spiritual desert within the modern city, but also to its persistent qualities of fable, paradox and even whimsy.And things are pretty bad in "Blindness," a perversely enjoyable, occasionally harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 disaster allegory."[49] The National Federation of the Blind announced plans to picket theaters in at least 21 states, in the largest protest in the organization's 68-year history.