Starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo. Written by Don McKellar, based on the novel by José Saramago. Directed by Fernando Mereilles. 120 min. (18A) Opens Oct 3. See Interview page 18.
Many critics who were present for the film’s premiere at Cannes were not kind to director Fernando Mereilles’ adaptation of José Saramago’s dark allegory about societal disintegration in the wake of an epidemic of sightlessness. Yet Blindness deserves more humane treatment than it’s received, especially now that it has been reworked to address many of the first version’s shortcomings, the most glaring being the voice-over narration that refused to let subtext stay subtext. Without it, the story is more disturbing and the whole work given greater cumulative force.
It’s tough going to witness the inexorable slide into squalour and violence within the dilapidated hospital ward where the blind are quarantined. Without the presence of Julianne Moore as the one person able to witness the horrors, the film would’ve been unbearably bleak. Yet there’s more warmth and colour in this tale than you might expect to find amid the shit-strewn hallways. The script by Don McKellar (who also stars) preserves most of the novel’s grace. The visual aesthetic is unusually daring, cinematographer Cesar Charlone favouring off-kilter framing and contrasts between light and dark. Some sequences are hampered by an air of tentativeness but Meirelles and McKellar succeed at bringing a palpable urgency and specificity to Saramago’s apocalyptic allegory.