Film Review: Blindness

Film: Blindness
Director: Fernando Meirelles"White Blindness" begins to spread throughout the city. The government quickly takes "control" of the situation by rounding up the infected and quarantining them in an abandoned mental hospital. Besides handing out food rations, the government intends for the newly quarantined blind to basically fend for themselves.

Julian Moore's character is in this first group of the infected and she is not infected but only pretended to be so that she could care for her blinded husband. As the population of the mental hospital grows so does the claustrophobia.

The groups of infected break off into "wards" assigning representatives of each, but one man in ward three declares himself "King of the all the wards" and hordes the food rations. What follows is an exhausting and thrilling ride through human survival. Heart strings are pulled and the violence almost seems too real.

This movie had probably the best cinematography I had seen all last year and up until today. It's beautiful overexposure tricks your eyes, effectively pulling the audience in to sort of experience the story and not just watch it. Even objects in the film appear out of nowhere as a character runs into them. For example, a blind boy begins to walk across a room...there's nothing in front of him, yet he runs something and we hear something move across the floor. A table that wasn't there before quickly fades into view as the boy stumbles on across the room. Each shot seemed perfectly planned out having almost seemingly razor sharp symmetry in some cases. The devastation of the outside world during the last scenes look amazing and make sense compared to whats happening to the people.

I had two problems with the film however. I think the plot could've been written in a more cohesive manner only when it comes to the government's treatment to the newly infected blind people. Seriously, would the government just throw the infected blind into a quarantine without the help of doctors or nurses? They wouldn't come in dressed to the teeth in contamination suits to help in the slightest? That part is hard to believe. The second problem was the whole montage scene with Danny Glover's character (none of the characters have names by the way) narrating on top of that. His acting throughout the movie is excellent yet that scene just seems to fake. He's a blind new comer into one of the wards and is telling people who have been there longer what is happening on the outside world...but the approach is all wrong. It literally sounds like he's reading.

All in all, this movie is well worth your time and despite the two problems above, the story and acting hold it together to compose a gut wrenching story of human survival. You have to see this movie! 5 blood drops!