Blindness-Feel Around for Some Logic

Spoilers within.

Blindness is a movie about what happens when people start to go blind for no reason. Think Lord of The Flies meets 28 Days Later-only not quite as interesting as either one. I liked Blindness, but it is a standard issue sci fi premise that something happens-we never find out why-and we then watch as society falls instantly into shambles.

I was never sure where the story of Blindness was set-at first I thought it was in Hong Kong or some other large city. It seems to set in America, with a large and impressive bridge half completed in the middle of town. Like many sci fi stories, it seems to be set in The City and run by The World Health Organization. One man goes blind and soon everyone he comes into contact with goes blind, except for Julianne Moore, who seems to be immune to the mysterious disease.

The Government rounds up everyone they can find and shut them up in what looks like some leftover Ellis Island. Time has no meaning-to the people in the concentration camp or to the audience. Some time passes and more victims of blindness show up. Some are killed by trigger happy guards. Others form into gangs and rape and murder follow in rapid order. Filth piles up everywhere and people stop bothering to get dressed, or merely forget where they left their clothes when they took them off. Blindness makes the stupid people who live in this movie even more stupid than they were before. The sighted guards are thugs and our little group is left to fend for themselves.

There is a man in the camp who was blind before blindness struck. He ends up ruling his part of the camp while our sighted hero is more of a slay to her compassion for her many blind friends and her blind husband. The prison becomes a literal hell as a fire is set and the hapless blind wave their arms at the flames like Frankenstein unable to escape or put out the blaze.

As with all such films, we go from a large group to an ever smaller one. We end up with five or six of the people we have watched from the start as they make their way through The City with the help of their sighted leader. The entire world looks exactly like the concentration camp-trash and bodies litter the sidewalks and burns cars fill the highways. There is no sign that anyone left in this world can see. There is no sign of any Authority. The people who have Blindness are helpless idiots roaming the streets in small groups and killing each other for food and water.

I kept think of that old saw In The Land of The Blind, The One Eyed Man is King-but he would not want to be King here. Nothing works, no water, no power, no one can even find their homes once they wander away from them. There are a lot of people left alive in The City, but they are all homeless and dirty and evil.

There were a number of moving moments in Blindness, and so long as you don’t spend too much time asking questions, it’s not a bad film. It has a cop out ending which just happens without any explanations or reasons. Blind people are understandable unhappy about blindness being portrayed as a death sentence or at the very least, a short road to madness. There was just way too much time spend in the concentration camp and way too little time spend doing anything a sane and normal person might do.

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