Blindness
A man standing still at the traffic lights suddenly can’t see anymore. A pedestrian passing by decides to help him and drives him to his house. When his wife arrives they go to an eye specialist but nothing is found wrong except that the guy can’t see. As time progresses, more and more people start getting blind. The government decides to put those affected in quarantine, starting with the first victims. One of them is the eye specialist who’s wife is determined not to leave him eventhough she isn’t affected yet.
Once in quarantine, more and more people arrive and the scare of getting affected is so high that the military who guard the place stay away from the quarantine area and shoot whoever tries to escape. It isn’t before long that groups start to form amongst those affected and when one takes over power and enstates a dictatorship, things turn really bad…
Sound and Vision:
The image quality is very good with very high contrast, plenty of detail (except for the “blind” scenes obviously) and no compression errors.
Little to be said about the sound. It does its job nicely but isn’t anything special.
Extras:
Nonte
Conclusion:
Fernando Meirelles, known from The Constant Gardener and City of Men, again brings us a movie that doesn’t paint a nice picture about humanity. When people start going blind without good reason, the government decides to put them in quarantine and leave them there without much care. Before long, groups are formed amongst the blind and one of them takes power with horrible results. Unfortunately, Blindness is filled with plot twists that are hardly believable and although the acting is decent the actions of the characters seem strange to say the least. There are several flaws in the script and the “happy ending” only makes things worse.
Where Blindness tends to go towards an atmosphere that goes towards that of 28 Days Later, it doesn’t manage to keep tension high and feels to be dragging on too long without reason.
All in all, a rather disappointing movie.
5.0