BLINDNESS deals with the sudden unexplained disease affecting people and how one group of people deals with the problem.  The film is directed by acclaimed Brazilian Fernando Meirelles who astounded audiences with the highly energetic CITY OF GOD years back.

But in the new film BLINDNESS, Meirelles confuses reality with credibility.  He takes great care at getting shots not only done right but beautifully (though there are some really filthy scenes) with impressive sets of a city ravaged by human beings in panic.  But the whole film is unbelievable as nothing is attempted to explain or even hinted at the cause or cure of the blindness.  The story concerns an unexplained epidemic causing people to go blind.  They see all white, allowing Meirelles to white out instead of fade out one scene to another.  Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore play doctor and wife.  The wife, pretending to be blind accompanies her husband into an asylum that holds the initial diseased.  The film is based on Jose Saramago’s novel and adapted for the screen by Don McKellar who directed a similar film about the end of the world called LAST NIGHT in 1998.  The impressive cast which includes Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal and Don McKellar is totally wasted.  This must be Garcia Bernal’s most embarrassing role of his career – that of a mad sex-crazed blind man.

CITY OF GOD was full of crazed madness that fitted the subject of lost Brazilian youth.  BLINDNESS however is caged madness that is out of place with its subject of the need to see the beauty and joy of living.