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Product Description

A doctor's wife becomes the only person with the ability to see in a town where everyone is struck with a mysterious case of sudden blindness. She feigns illness in order to take care of her husband as her surrounding community breaks down into chaos and disorder. Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago.


Based on Jos¨¦ Saramago's allegorical novel, Blindness is a haunting film that works like an unusual fusion of fable and gritty suspense. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo star as an unnamed, married couple living in an unidentified city where a mass epidemic of blindness hits. Ruffalo's character, a doctor, is affected, but Moore's is not. When the two are transferred to a government-run quarantine facility complete with armed guards, they soon find themselves in a rapidly deteriorating situation. Criminals take over food distribution and extort possessions and sex from the innocent. Sanitation becomes a thing of the past. More subtly, rules that might govern one's judgement and behavior on an everyday basis simply vanish, and personal and collective values rewrite themselves. Moore's character hides the fact that she can see (except from her spouse), and thus becomes the audience's surrogate in the thick of so much misery. She also becomes an avenging angel at exactly the right time, and then a matriarch when the action shifts from the quarantine hell to the city's streets. The latter part of Blindness finds a handful of the inmates (played by Danny Glover and Alice Braga, among others) joining Moore and Ruffalo in a kind of post-apocalypse oasis, a chapter as touching as the previous chapters were nightmarish.

Director Fernando Meirelles deftly captures the film's spirit of mixed parable and horror, grounding the action but at the same time encouraging a viewer not to take it too literally. He honors Saramago's creative depiction of blindness not as a field of black but, in this case, as an ocean of white. He also does some tricky, disorienting things with the camera, shooting at odd angles, putting his frame around strange details in a scene--all of it has a way of giving a viewer a feeling of what it's like to perceive the world in a whole new way. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

• Not Your Standard Hollywood Drivel
  I'm not sure why people dislike this movie. If you want your standard Hollywood drivel, then go watch "Angel Eyes" starring Jennifer Lopez. However, if you want a thoughtful, provocative, and yes, disturbing movie that exposes human nature, then "Blindness" is right for you.
  
  This movie is not about blindness. What caused the blindness? Whose looking for a cure? Is there a cure? Who cares? Sight loss is simply a catalyst that answers a more important question: Who are we?
  
  I'm not sure I always liked the answer, but its truth is unmistakable. Sometimes we are wonderful, compassionate people who want to help and restore order and decency in troubled times. Sometimes we are not.
  
  Take a look around you. Do you see the strong exploiting the weak? Do you see people taking advantage of others? Wars? Violence and hate? While at the same time some good people try to make sense of the madness. If you're looking for a movie with that kind of reality, depth and insight, then give "Blindness" a try.
  
  
  
  
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• WORST MOVIE EVER!!
  EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD SUDDENLY GOES BLIND EXCEPT FOR ONE PERSON. A FEW WEEKS LATER, THEY GET THEIR SIGHT BACK. NO EXPLANATION OR REASON WHY. SURE, THE MOVIE MAKES YOU THINK A BIT ABOUT THE "WHAT IF SCENARIO" OF HUMAN CO-EXISTENCE, BUT THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE. PLUS THE REALITY THAT THIS COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN IS ABSURD. MY SUGGESTION IS DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME......more info
• Anarchy of the Blind
  Typical and predictable behavior of the oppressor and oppressed. No really, you could see what was coming in a not so original premise for a lousy movie. As the conditions degraded and the paranoia got worse, the story became laborious. The usual scumbag "king of the hill" surfaces its ugly head to turn the little community into an anarchy unto itself.
  
  A cross between "Animal Farm" and "Lord Of The Flies?"...more info
• Awful Movie!
  Jumbled plot,sub-par acting,z grade production from top to bottom.They should have Blinded the director for making this tripe(j/k)...more info
• One of the Worst Movies Ever Made
  This is one of the worst movies ever made. It starts off good and then it quickly falls apart and turns into a horrible movie that you wished you never saw. I thought that I would give this movie a chance and now I truly regret it. I threw away almost $20 on this trash....more info
• Dumb, Dumb, Dumb
  I love Juliette Moore and thought this would be a great movie like "Day of the Triffids." I was really disappointed. The story-line was plausible but the reality was stupid.
  
  She could have taken out the "King" before all the degredation and going into the grocery store, she was no better off then the blind people there. Come on. If anyone in real-life was in that situation, they would be walking around with a 2X4 at the least.
  
  Then she goes down into a dark basement with no matches, although she accidently found some there???? Why didn't she just pick some up among the mess in the store???? I'm sure there would be plenty of matches and candles up there.
  
  It looked like it was just thrown together to shock people with the degredation and no concern of reality. Too bad.......more info
• Waste of Potential
  Once upon a time, there was a book and later a movie called "Day of the Triffids". In the book (and I assume the movie), people go blind while watching comets at night. Those that didn't see the comets, kept their sight. As a result, the whole world is thrown into chaos. "Blindness" is similar to "Day of the Triffids" except there are no triffids and the blindness is more gradual. The world has time to attempt a cure. Most of the movie deals with a group of people thrown into a quarantine (one of which still had their eyesight) and the resulting deteriorating conditions. None of the characters had any appeal. The plot was exceedingly slow at times and unnecessarily brutal at other times (as alluded to in other reviews). Overall, I had high hopes for the movie and it failed across the board. I cannot recommend the movie to anyone. ...more info