Two Cents: Blindness

I just watched Blindness, well...sort of.

The trailer for this film that I saw a while back inspired this idea in my head of an action movie with a provocative plot line of what happens when we lose our sight. Similar to all other apocalyptic movies, but possibly smarter?

...I was really wrong. I feel like my movie sense has been so far off that I am considering stopping while I am not ahead.

With a movie filled with actors that have proven their talent on the silver screen countless times (Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover), it truly suprised me that they were "duped" into a horrible piece of film.

The movie starts out with very interesting lighting, we are looking at a picture with blurs and bright lights and we see our first few characters proclaim they are blind. From that point we see a type of quarantine happening where people are being picked up from their homes and transported to a "ward". The ward leaves a little to be desired and basically the blind are dropped off to this warehouse which seems more like a maze. The audience has to suffer through watching the blind wander down halls and stairs to find dingy cots. In the background we see a tape playing from the Health Administration giving them instructions, this gets very old...due to the constant replay.

To make matters short, Julianne Moore, only known as the Doctor's Wife, insists on going with him to the ward (he is actually blind, she is not). She performs powerfully and moves anybody with a heart, to be expected. Otherwise the movie goes downhill gross representations of mob living which seems to maybe rival scenes from internment camps that have been abandoned. Disease, death, and disarray ravage the people. Food is hoarded, personal possesions are taken in exchange for little food, and then women are offered up as sexual sacrifices, among other gory and disgusting scenes that do little to explain a central message about anything.

At the point where rape in exchange for food ensued in the grossest and most undignified ways I could not watch any longer. I am suprised that the A-list actors that signed on to this film would question their choices. I can understand the need to break new ground, but this movie had absolutely no point and from the looks of the full synopsis it continued to go nowhere.

Please do not watch it. It was awful.

Two Cents : It was a movie that was a fresh take on the apocalyptic genre and had many opportunities to make smart statements about human nature and mob mentality. What you get for your time is a movie with no point, over the top gore and grossness, and an unexplained plot resolution that definitely is not worth the wait.