Blindness
Dir Fernando Meirelles w/ Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo. 118 min. Special Presentations.
BY Jason Anderson
August 26, 2008 20:08
Many critics at Cannes were less than kind to director Fernando
Mereilles’ adaptation of Jose Saramago’s dark allegory about societal
disintegration in the wake of an epidemic of sightlessness. Yet
Blindness deserves rather more humane treatment than it’s received. The
script by Don McKellar (who also stars) preserves most of the necessary
grace notes while bringing a lighter touch to the novel’s
heavier-handed moments. The visual aesthetic is unusually daring, with
convincing use of locations in Guelph and Sao Paulo. Julianne Moore is
also on typically strong form as the one character who is able to
witness her world’s descent into squalour and brutality. An air of
tentativeness hampers the whole endeavour but the story still has great
force.
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