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Fernando Meirelles shot to international fame by co-directing the Brazilian masterpiece City of God (with Kátia Lund). Since this remarkable breakthrough film he inevitably moved to the English-speaking realm, firstly with the well-reviewed but arguably overrated The Constant Gardener, and now with plague thriller Blindness. Narratives based around disease outbreaks are not exactly rare - all zombie films could be grouped under that banner, for example - but history has shown that they often provide a good basis on which to build a gripping film. Blindness' unique deviation from the norm is that the plague in this case takes the form of, you guessed it, mass blindness. It starts off with a bloke suddenly losing his sight while waiting in his car at traffic lights. He goes to see his doctor, who can't explain it (indeed, going by the lack of physical evidence for the blindness, he thinks the patient might be lying); the next morning, the doctor himself wakes up blind. The contagion spreads rapidly, and the early section of the film establishes the mounting dread and panic very effectively.
It's the middle section of the film that has caused most controversy, and will absolutely disgust many viewers (which is half the point, really). Blindness opened Cannes this year, and was met with some of the most scathing critiques from any festival premiere in a very long time. But it's not surprising that it evoked such reactions, as some of the events depicted are truly shocking. The middle hour of the film is set entirely within a decrepit hospital, where the government have sent the infected to be quarantined. Rapidly a mini-society develops within this entirely isolated environment, presided over by Gael García Bernal's monstrous self-proclaimed "King of Ward 3". He, along with some cronies, stockpiles all the food, and at first demands valuables in exchange for rations. When the valuables run out, he then starts demanding sexual favours from the women. It is hard to watch, made more so by the squalid, grim conditions into which the hospital quickly descends.
The audience's eyes through all this belong to Julianne Moore, wife of the aforementioned doctor (Zodiac's Mark Ruffalo), who is locked up in the hospital with her husband but in fact retains her sight and seems to be immune to whatever disease is causing the blindness, or "white sickness", as it is called in the film, due to the fact that all the afflicted can see is a blank screen of white. The actress, who also appeared in the fairly similar but overwhelmingly superior Children of Men, anchors the film effectively with a sympathetic performance, but it remains hard to grasp why she doesn't protest more against the injustices that occur within the hospital prison, given that she has the obvious advantage of sight. Furthermore, the speed at which this self-contained ecosystem descends into anarchy strains belief. Presumably Meirelles is making a point about the innate evil inside normal human beings, but it's rather heavy-handed.
The "white sickness" is reflected in the cinematography, which is constantly overexposed, leading to a very washed-out, pale appearance. Director of photography César Charlone also uses a very shallow depth of field throughout, so normally most of what is in the frame is out of focus. The reasoning behind this approach is appropriate for the story, but the visual style does become somewhat tedious and oppressive after a while. It is a blessed relief in the later stages when the characters gain their freedom and stumble into the light. The images of the rubbish-strewn yet mostly empty city streets, post-epidemic, resembles the London scenes in 28 Days Later, and have a similarly striking impact. The end is ultimately hopeful, but those seeking any explanations will be sorely disappointed; the origin of the blindness and the reason for Julianne Moore's immunity are never revealed. They're largely irrelevant, really, but for some that will just be another cherry of exasperation on top of an already unsatisfying cake.
The summary
A harrowing slog at times, but Blindness is gripping and thought-provoking. Whether anyone would ever want to watch it twice, though, is another matter.
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