Blindness is pure ideological gimmickry: An unspecified city
in an unspecified nation is stricken by an epidemic of blindness known
as “the white sickness” (“It feels like I’m swimming in milk,” says the
first victim). The frantic government rounds up the afflicted (and
their secretly still-sighted savior, played by Julianne Moore) and
locks them in an abandoned hospital under armed guard. Almost
immediately—I mean, seriously, within weeks—the
social order crumbles, the infected start crapping everywhere and
fighting over food and raping indiscriminately, and the film becomes
physically impossible to watch.

It has the potential to be an interesting exercise, and
Blindness—based on the novel by José
Saramago—is stunningly effective in the tension department. Every
object in the movie is sharp, or hot, or loud, or fast. Characters
grasp and stumble and impale themselves on scissors and high heels. But
when the vacuum-sealed high concept escapes the boundaries of the
hospital—when Saramago and director Fernando Meirelles reveal
themselves as smug, black-clad cynics who actually believe that humans
tend toward chaos, maaan—any sensible person has to call
bullshit. Surely, in the early weeks of the epidemic, Sandra Oh (as a
Shadowy World Leader) could recruit some preexisting blinds to teach
the remaining nonblinds how to effectively function while blind? So
then when everyone actually ends up blind, they don’t just crawl around
on the street eating garbage and crying? I MEAN, SURELY. It’s just not
plausible. At least 1997’s Cube had the decency to be set in a
contextless magical maze.

The entire package—book, movie, and attending
implications—seems like nothing more than a massive contrivance
leading up to Saramago’s über-earnest punch line (trumpeted in the
press materials): “I don’t think we did go blind. I think we always
were blind. Blind but seeing. People who can see, but do not see.”

Wow, man. That’s deep. That’s deep.

Oh wait. What I actually meant was shut the fuck up. recommended

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

19 replies on “On Screen”

  1. Seriously? You think in the “real world,” the leaders would band together to teach people how to handle their plight, rather than just racing to protect themselves and abandon anyone else?

    And you think this based on evidence like, oh… say… how our world leaders banded together to bring food and security to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Or how our world leaders banded together to support and rescue victims of the Rwandan genocides?

    No. The social order DOES crumble. Saramago was spot-on, and his book was beautiful and tragic and deeply true.

    Formal education about how to handle sudden and irreversible TOTAL blindness? For fucks sake… we can’t even properly educate about how to avoid HIV infection.

  2. Anybody ever read the book “Day of The Triffids”? John Wyndham covered this already 40 years ago, and even got the “social order does crumble” part right. Yawn.

  3. Lindsey, you are a dumb.

    If EVERYONE around was all of a sudden blind, there would be like a week maybe of total chaos, then it would get better. HIV and blindness are different, and if everyone is blind then you have a common bond to exploit, that any halfway sensible person could get behind.

    Have some faith that people arent as dumb as you want them to be.

  4. Lindsey’s right. If the last 8 years aren’t enough to convince you that a vacuum of leadership during a crisis can easily lead to an unraveling of the social order, then nothing will.

  7. Oh dear god.

    I think I just got dumber from reading this review. Telling one of the world’s most gifted writers to “Shut the fuck up?” Really? Why does Lindy West hate literature so much?

  8. Of all the dumb crap I’ve read by Lindy West this definitely takes the cake. Of course! Why didn’t Saramago take into account the legions of teachers of the blind standing ever vigilant, ready to be deployed at a moments notice, in the event of epidemic blindness? You sound like Tara Reid wondering why Palestinians and Jews can’t just be friends.

  9. Hey guys, why don’t you try WATCHING THE FUCKING MOVIE before you get all up in Lindy’s grill? I know you loved the book. But guess what? THE MOVIE ISN’T THE BOOK.

  11. The best scene was the last scene. A lot of the behavior didn’t make sense, like it took her way too long to use those scissors. And the movie was just plain dirty. Took awhile to finish. But. I liked it.

  12. Actually, the reviewer, Lindy West, should have tried watching the film. I may not have received any pre-press materials on which to base a critique, but any actual viewer would realize that the film–unlike the book–makes no mention of the novel’s supposedly “über-earnest punch line.” So, it is indeed true that the movie isn’t the book. Unfortunately, Lindy West was the first to conflate them.

  14. Haven’t seen or read either – but I can still agree with Lindy on one point: Blindness as an allegory for our current condition is hammy as all hell.

  16. Ms. West. I think this is one of the most short-sighted and idiotic reviews of a film I have ever read. Your are an embarrassment. Your regular column is equally trite and vacuous.

  18. “the film becomes physically impossible to watch.”

    Hey Lindy – Words mean shit! You can’t just slap some text on a page and have it mean something other than what it means. Did the film change size to something microscopic so that it became physically impossible to watch? Say what you mean, which i’m guessing is something like “i had difficulty watching the scenes”

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