Creative blindness

Are there any original ideas left in Hollywood?

Aside from the terrible remakes, sequels and adaptations, it seems like even the movies dressed up as original or different follow the same bullshit constructs that have been thrown at audiences for decades. Nevertheless, the creative honchos behind “Blindness,” which includes hotly acclaimed director Fernando Meirelles, obviously decided another “Lord of the Flies” tale just needed to be told.  

However, “Blindness” (adapted from a book) fails to present anything but allegorical and depressing mush on screen for more than two hours.

Random people suddenly start going blind. A doctor (Mark Ruffalo) examines one of the first seemingly fine yet blind patients, and it somehow spreads to others. The next morning the doc wakes up blind and agrees to go to a camp where others are being taken.

His wife (Julianne Moore) lies about being blind so she can come along. More succumb to the blindness and are taken to the camp/prison. As conditions deteriorate and people become uneasy, the wife struggles with being the only person with vision.

“Blindness” tries so hard to create this allegory for today’s world and spread a message, but there’s never really a message to begin with. By now we all understand that under major duress, people participate in the same asinine power struggles and we really don’t give shit about one another.

All the characters are basically archetypes that you’ve also seen eight million times. They’re so unimportant that they don’t even have names. Ruffalo and Moore deserve better.

Worst of all is the cinematography that plays up the blindness angle too much. The lighting is awful and everything is obscured beyond recognition most of the time. The coverage of the horrendous conditions is not moving; instead it’s uncomfortable beyond belief.

Watching “Blindness” was truly the worst movie experience of my life. The plot’s tired, the characters are wafer-thin and the settings made me want to vomit. Metaphor or not, this movie is an insult to the blind, and everyone else in the world.