It is not an easy fable. So few worthy fables are.
When the characters in Fernando Meirelles’ disturbingly beautiful film “Blindness” are stricken, they plunge into a world that looks fluid, milky.
The First Blind Man, as he is referred to in the credits, is sitting in a car at an intersection when he loses his sight.
Is he at a crossroads? Of course, he is. And so is the government that imposes a quarantine in Don McKellar’s adaptation of Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago’s stunning parable.
Other characters, identified in the similarly vague yet specific ways, cross paths at an ophthalmologist’s. The Doctor (Mark Rufallo) can’t diagnose the illness. Then he and others he treated lose their vision.
Played by consistently brave performer Julianne Moore, The Doctor’s wife continues to see as the pandemic sweeps the unnamed city. She sees for us. It’s a role she shirks, embraces, dodges and accepts.
McKellar, Gael Garcia Bernal and Danny Glover also star.
“Blindness” leaves indelible images and unnerving feelings about physical and social disintegration. It is not easy to stomach. At first it’s tempting to dismiss the goverment’s heartlessness. No government would behave that way. No citizenry would let it. But treated as an allegory of, say, poverty, the notion of hiding away the afflicted, letting them rot, doesn’t seem so willful on the filmmaker’s part.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles written by Don McKellar; from the Jose Saramago novel; starring Julianne Moore, Mark Rufallo, Alice Braga, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Yosuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura. Maury Chaykin. Rated R for violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity. 2 hours. Opens at area theaters.
