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BLINDNESS

Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Alice Braga, Don McKellar, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura and Gael Garcia Bernal

Directed by: Fernando Meirelles

R for violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity

By John Delia

Although at first sight Blindness delivers a plot that has a chance to be engaging, engrossing and empathetic, but the film looses with uneven directing, incredulous scenes and an empty ending that spoils the show. If you are looking for a sci-fi thriller, you won’t find it with Blindness; it’s more like The Fog without the monsters.
A blindness creating virus of some sort (we really don’t ever find out what it is) affects an Asian man (Iseya) who spreads it to his wife (Kimura) and a thief (McKellar), who then spread it to innocent bystanders, and eventually to an eye doctor (Ruffalo) who infects his patients, and so on and so on until most of the city has the affliction. The blinded people are all carted off to a medical detention center for isolation from the rest of the city. While at the heavily guarded facility the inmates are separated into three groups, each with their own leader. When the food starts getting scarce, one of the factions steals the last shipment and holds it for ill gotten gain and perverted acts.
The film is spotted with famous faces like Sandra Oh (Sideways) as the Minister of Health who gets a minute of screen time with a walk down a corridor while telling the men following her the dilemma that has taken hold of the city. Danny Glover plays an old man with a black eye patch who shows up once or twice in the film and has fewer lines than he did in the movie Saw. Maybe they were not working at the time and they just wanted a chance to work under director Meirelle, because anyone could have played their meaningless parts.
The film does have some excellent talent, but in some cases it was wasted. Blindness features the fine actress Alice Braga (I am Legend) playing a frightened woman who wears sunglasses throughout the film even while she is getting raped. Not a great role to put in your resume. And then there is Maury Chaykin (Being Julia) play a ‘real’ blind man accountant caught up in the catastrophe who turns into a sadistic letch? The two are above and beyond that stage in their careers.
On the other hand, there is a saving grace in the film and it comes with the performances of Moore and Ruffalo, a married couple who find each other in a position of protecting themselves from all the evils that are being cast upon them. While Moore does a superb job pretending to be blind so she can look out for her husband, Ruffalo admirably takes on the role of the parasitic husband living off his wife’s ability to keep him fit and out of harms way. The two characters play off each other nicely showing the strength of their love even in the face of a pitiful act of lust.
The film contains violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity, and should only be viewed by adults who are not easily sickened by visual adulteration.
FINAL ANALYSIS: Blindness looses sight of a potentially good plot with an unfulfilling ending. (1 of 5 stars)