Just saw Blindness.
Caution: spoilers ahoy!Talk about a letdown. I was initially looking forward to this adaptation of the foreign language novel that I never read based solely on the director and the first trailer. I didn't even hold Juliane Moore (whom I feel ever since I endured an early screening of Freedomland, is fishing for an Oscar) against the whole affair.
But - wow - this film really fell apart early and manages to be one of the few post-apocalyptic films in recent memory that I can categorize as boring.
The film also ignores the fact that the victims go blind - not bleed out, contract smallpox or the bird flu. It exists as a fictionalized account of what would happen if the world went blind, as obviously there is no recorded history of such peoples living successful lives as contributing members of society. No, the blind would poop and pee all over themselves, scavenge and kill for food and have unprotected sex! If such foul creatures existed in the real world, this film would have us burn them alive as not to spread their wicked illness amongst us.
The worst offense, other than insulting anyone who is actually blind, is that it's just boring.
We're supposed to feel the gripping, emotional tale of Juliane Moore and Mark Ruffalo, as their marriage falls apart and comes back together again in
an Academy Award nominated performance a banal performance that bludgeons us to death about seeing beauty from the inside.
Mark Ruffalo begins his horrifying transformation into a... blind person.Juliane Moore does her best to look as sexually unappealing as possible (her tits are gross in this), so much so that there isn't much remorse when her husband inevitably cheats on her. Mark Ruffalo reminds us that Zodiac was a fluke and that he is to be banished back to romantic comedies.
All I wanted to do was fast forward to the entertaining parts - like when the fat guy from Cutthroat Island barters sexual favors for food (he literally asks one of his harem if he can suck on her nipples in one of the most unintentionally hilarious bits of dialogue ever) or when packs of roving dogs feast on the entrails of the dead. Fleeting moments in a sea of white contrast.
The hook is that Julian Moore's character can actually see, giving her a "One Eyed Man is King..." story that is ultimately wasted. I'm not asking that she strap on some leather and start a Beckinsale-esque one woman army against these vile blind people, but something more fulfilling than the awful ending that the audience is awarded with for enduring this whole film would've be nice.
Ultimately, this film would've been far more entertaining had it been remade with the epidemic causing dementia and/or turrets, with hordes of ravenous victims yelling incoherent profanities as they brutally sodomized one another while defecating and urinating in the streets.
And it'd probably be less offensive.
I give this film one Juliane Moore extorted blow job out of four.
