Blindness

At least when you sit down and watch Blindness, it doesn't give you the impression that it was made in a factory-like way. It should be given at least one star for presenting something different. The other thing is that the trailer does not give the whole movie away. Most of the trailer happens in the first 15 or 20 minutes of the movie. Blindness is not a big movie. Most of it happens on one or two large sets, it is a modest movie. It is based on a novel by José Saramago, and though I don't think it is being sold this way, it has a hint of a sci-fi movie. It takes one premise, that blindness could be caught like a cold, and it runs with it. I haven't read the novel the movie is based on, but the movie definitely has a Lord of the Flies type of feel to it. The movie is not a complete success, but I did enjoy the fact that it tried something different.

The acting in the movie is good to great. Julianne Moore is absolutely haunting in this, and she gives a great performance (I have found her somewhat hit and miss in her past movies, but always interesting). The movie is shot in a washed out kind of look that fits the material well. The script keeps our interest, but feels somewhat heavy handed at times, and the arc of the film doesn't quite work. The Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum as an evil preacher, is one of my favorite movies, but the last third of it kind of falls flat after the terrific first part of the movie. I always thought Dumbo was a terrific little movie; short and sweet, near perfect, and goes down like honey. There is nothing wrong with it; good story, great voices, great animation, and imaginative. Blindness at times doesn't seem to move forward, and drags in places. But at other times it can be almost painful to watch, because the acting puts the characters across in a way that we care about what happens to them. The choices that the characters make though, at times, doesn't really ring true (especially when the logic versus brute force kind of theme starts to creep in, it feels predictable). The movie was directed by Fernando Meirelles, who had previously directed The Constant Gardner.

The DVD has a documentary and is presented in widescreen with Dolby digital.

You can write to James Harper at movielover77061@yahoo.com