Review by Chris Walts

Blindness is best described less as a film, and more as a perverse examination of what would happen to humanity if blindness suddenly became an infectious disease. Adapted from José Saramago's novel by Don McKellar and directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener), Blindness is set in an unnamed city in present day, where everyone who becomes infected with blindness gets quarantined to a rundown sanitarium, and left to fend for themselves.

Under the pretense that Blindness is more an of examination than a film, it does an excellent job of making the audience empathize with the blind, while also forcing us to question our moral grounding. Julianne Moore turns in a great performance that is well supported by a large ensemble casting including Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, and Don McKellar. The film on the whole however, starts slowly and ends abruptly without pushing its moral tightrope to its full potential. The large ensemble cast also is problematic at times as there are simply too many stories going at once to for one to absorb all the atrocities of the situation. That being said, the heart of the film and the sometimes-gruesome questions it raises are strong enough to overcome its structural flaws.

Blindness
Fernando Meirelles | Canada/Brazil/Japan | 2008 | 118min

Thur. Sept. 25 | 7:00pm | Empire Granville Theatre 7
Sat. Sept. 27 | 10:30am | Empire Granville Theatre 2