Blindness

Name: Blindness
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Romance
Released: October 3, 2008
Duration: 121 min
Rating: 45

2008

METASCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 133 Ratings

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5.9

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5.9	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 133 Ratings

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Blindness

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Movie Details & Credits

Miramax Films | Release Date: October 3, 2008 | R

Summary: It begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters – his wife, his doctor, even the seemingly good Samaritan who gives him a lift home – will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As theIt begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters – his wife, his doctor, even the seemingly good Samaritan who gives him a lift home – will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As the contagion spreads, and panic and paranoia set in across the city, newly blind victims of the “White Sickness” are rounded up and quarantined within a crumbling, abandoned mental asylum, where all semblance of ordinary life begins to break down. (Miramax Films)… Expand

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Genre(s): Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Romance

Rating: R

Runtime: 121 min

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Critic Reviews

Bill White

Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong. Read full review

Mick LaSalle

At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something. Read full review

Kyle Smith

I kept hoping the meaning would click into place, but it never quite did. Read full review

A.O. Scott

Not a great film, mainly because it can't transcend -- and, indeed, lays bare -- the intellectual flimsiness of its source. But it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like. For all its chin-rubbing, brow-furrowing attitudes, it does not, in the end, give you much to think about. But there is, nonetheless, a lot here to see. Read full review

Steven Rea

Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings. Read full review

Anthony Lane

The trouble with Blindness is that it’s so preoccupied with shouldering this symbolic weight that it gradually forgets to tell a story--to keep faith with the directives of common sense. Read full review

J.R. Jones

This ends on an uplifting and philosophical note, equating moral blindness with the literal sort, which you'll probably appreciate if you haven't already slit your wrists. Read full review

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User Reviews

YuriC.

Oct 1, 2008

I love how he (the director) tells the history. Amazing.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

DudleiO.

Oct 17, 2009

Wonderful! I have both read the novel and watched the movie, and it's hard to say which one is better. You can feel the desperation the characters go through. In some scenes I felt breathless, such was the intensity of (both physical and moral) violence. And, as I left the movie Wonderful! I have both read the novel and watched the movie, and it's hard to say which one is better. You can feel the desperation the characters go through. In some scenes I felt breathless, such was the intensity of (both physical and moral) violence. And, as I left the movie theater, I honestly believed, for a few seconds, that everyone around me had gone blind. Such a powerful movie!… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful

carlitod

Sep 3, 2009

This movie rocks! A must see. Beautifully shot and executed. a flawless piece of what will one day become cult cinema.

2 of 3 users found this helpful

ChadS.

Oct 9, 2008

This happening is steeped in literary origins; one by one, big city denizens are embroiled in an epidemic of mass blindness, a condition that's symptomatic of an all-encompassing commonality: The world is going blind. "Blindness", the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Jose Saramengo, in This happening is steeped in literary origins; one by one, big city denizens are embroiled in an epidemic of mass blindness, a condition that's symptomatic of an all-encompassing commonality: The world is going blind. "Blindness", the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Jose Saramengo, in spite of its heightened language and scope, like Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", is unmistakably a work of speculative fiction, which becomes more readily apparent with this servicable adaptation that probably does a disservice to the celebrated Portugese writer, since the film invites easy comparisons to M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" and Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later". "Blindness" plays out like an art house B-picture. In place of blind people, insert zombies; while the zombies are blind to their own humanity, some of the quarantined people at the staging area are blind to inhumanity, as the King of Ward Three(Gael Garcia Bernal) and his minions, pillage the food and rape the women. Thankfully, the filmmaker is mindful of Sarmengo's literary pedigree; he resists the temptation to put his own stamp on the material, unlike an egotist such as Shyamalan, who given the opportunity to adapt "Blindness", might have provided his own adducement behind this inexplicable outbreak of spontaneous unseeing, and transform the Saramengo novel into a tree happening. This laborious, but passionate piece of filmmaking, coaxes science fiction out from the narrative's closet, much to the chagrin of the Nobel Prize committee. It's the Richard Matheson short story reimagined as "I Am Blind".… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful

Broyax

Jan 24, 2017

Le film épidémique est un genre rarement réussi comme le prouve une fois de plus ce Blindness... là, il s'agit d'une cécité contagieuse qui suit cependant les règles habituelles apocalyptiques des mises en quarantaine, de la panique et du chaos. Et en plus, comme si ça ne suffisait pas, on aLe film épidémique est un genre rarement réussi comme le prouve une fois de plus ce Blindness... là, il s'agit d'une cécité contagieuse qui suit cependant les règles habituelles apocalyptiques des mises en quarantaine, de la panique et du chaos. Et en plus, comme si ça ne suffisait pas, on a Julianne Moore, la seule -ou presque- à voir dans ce monde de non-voyants, justement celle qu'on ne voudrait ni voir ni entendre tant son jeu inexistant est déprimant.

Malgré des longueurs et malgré cette fin ridicule et moralisatrice, donneuse de leçons à la petite semaine, malgré bien des invraisemblances (tous ces dortoirs d'aveugles livrés à eux-mêmes qui se transforment en gangs, et puis quoi encore...) malgré tout cela, le film se laisse voir grâce à sa mise en scène qui reste solide. Et si on supporte Julianne. Heureusement que Ruffalo est là ! Mais il est clair que le réalisateur de la Cité de Dieu ne cesse de décevoir, film après film. Inquiétant.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

PauloS.

Dec 4, 2008

Total dud. How did they shave in the blind jail? Exactly, one small ridiculous detail in a film written by amateurs, riddled with a hundred far greater lapses. Complete waste of attention.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

Carol

Oct 6, 2008

One of the absolutely worst movies I've seen. I almost (and should have) walked out. No explanation for anything in a movie which debases everything and everyone.

0 of 1 users found this helpful

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