BLINDNESS

As I write, I am still trying to recover from having watched this apocalyptic vision of our society if, rapidly and without explanation, people become visually impaired en masse.

Here's the lowdown; there's a doctor (optometrist) played by Mark Ruffalo and his wife, played by Juilanne Moore. Patient Zero, played by a Japanese man is the first to become afflicted and visits the doctor at the insistence of his wife to secure a prognosis. Within 24 hours of that visit, doctor and his wife are both quarantined, though only the doctor has lost his sight. Within 72 hours most of the people who had any contact with Patient Zero join the doctor and his wife in Ward 1 of the quarantine. Shifting from the doctor's perspective to that of his wife, we see what a sighted person would experience as civilization and the activities, habits, and thoughts of civilized people become secondary to the emotional and physical needs of those who have lost their grip on reality.

It took ten years to acquire the rights for this film, development is a slow process, and with few exceptions, development is generally a slow process. Daniel Craig, not Mark Ruffalo was the original choice for the film and I cannot say he would have been better, but a different performance might have made this insufferable qualities for the doctor more bearable. Other incidentals: even though a city is not identified, the film definitely feels very different than an American city or culture. In the beginning of quarantine, even with characters speaking a predominantly English vocabulary, you feel as if this would not or could not happen in the U.S. The point that the director attempts to translate is that it did happen in a civilized society, and it happened to the highest and lowest elements of the population cutting across all races, religions, and physical aptitudes. By the end of the quarantine sequence, you're fairly certain this is exactly how your neighbor, boss, teacher, even a congressman or a convict would react to prolonged blindness and imprisonment.

Something I noticed that really seemed illustrate fear from outside the walls of quarantine was how people were transferred, guarded, and supplied in the beginning and how that process evolves. It's very telling that as the blindness is spreading, people are becoming more and more scared of the remote possibility of contact with those afflicted.

I'm tough, and I can handle some difficult scenes. I like horror movies, sci-fi, alternate realities, etc., but there were at least two scenes about five minutes in total, where I had to fast forward through. I'm not certain as to what could have been cut, but the film was too long, and for a period in quarantine, too depressing. The best way to relate this story would be to assure you that it is very much like I Am Legend, but the infected rely heavily upon the hero. Secondly, the ending is worth enduring through the isolation Moore's character expresses and the utter horror that Ward 3 is capable of producing.

Blindness is a difficult rental to recommend, but it is unique, and well-done in that respect.