It’s funny, when I first heard about this movie practically all I heard was “Julianne Moore” and “Blindness” and like one of Pavlov’s dogs my knee shot upwards and produced the response, “Oscar!” … how much more interesting, then, that it turns out Julianne Moore is the only person in this movie who isn’t blind in the end … and even more interesting that this is, in this movie at least, the trickier role to play.

Real blind people have apparently been outraged by the movie and the book it’s based on, believing it somehow deliberately states that all blind people are clumsy, evil, flawed, etc, like the suddenly stricken “white blind” in this fictional allegory. Now, nevermind that this possible misinterpretation is in fact addressed within the movie by the line (spoken about a “real blind” character who turns out to be an ass), “He’s blind. That doesn’t make him good or bad. It just makes him blind.” Nevermind that. The point is, this kind of reaction to the movie strikes me as just as dumb as that of those air hostesses who objected to the representation of cabin staff in Flightplan, lol. It’s like a nutshell summary of why media studies ought to be made more important in this world than maths and english. That’s all I’ll say about that.

I think, however, what people should really be offended by here (aside from this poster – oh, come on, that’s asking for it LOL), if anything (and I’m not encouraging it, just saying I kinda understand it) is how the movie is straddling a very tricky atmosphere … taking an essentially hokey root and layering it with a heavier, richer, “worthy” theme. The blindness, as everyone has already pointed out, is really more a Macguffin to get us to the point of the movie … problem is, unlike your regular Macguffin, it doesn’t – indeed, can’t – disappear once it’s served its purpose. So there’s an awkwardness that pervades just about the entire movie in the end.

Anyway, it’s like a lot of the better movies I’ve seen this year – and a lot of Julianne Moore movies, as a matter of fact … midway I found myself trying to remember the titles of both The Forgotten and Freedomland about which I’m sure I got just as if not more enthusiastic about but have never and probably will never beam past my retinas again. It’s very well made, the acting is superb, it’s well- if not beautifully shot (I love how the camera seems almost antisocial in the way it avoids people’s faces) and the sound mix is great … but it seemed to me it just didn’t go far enough in showing the chaos that would ensue if this happened.

Tags: apocalyptic, blind, chaos, epidemic, society

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.