Blindness is a kind of ‘end of the world’ movie. Here the demise of mankind is their loss of site. You never really find out what causes it but you see it start and spread like any other untreatable disease. What happens next is the government’s reaction to something they can neither control nor stop but that’s not all of the story. The movie really seems to find it’s stride when it explores what happens to a specific group of blind people over time once they’re rounded up. Things become very intense and the film paints a tragic and depressing picture of what humanity might become or perhaps already is.
There are a few famililar faces in this movie. Julianne Moore plays the wife of an Eye Doctor who is played by Mark Ruffalo. Julianne’s character is somehow immune to the disease and shares that secret with her sightless husband. The disease does not discriminate so people of all kinds including, doctors, prostitutes, thieves, would-be philosophers, and children find themselves herded together and forming a forced community. It get’s really bad towards the end and parts seem to resemble ‘Lord of the Flies’.
I don’t think I liked any character in this film but that didn’t stop me from watching it through to the end. Watching humanity devolve day by day until they are little more than filthy animals held my attention surprisingly well. I give this movie a 4 out of 5 marks.