Review: "Blindness" fails to see its full potential

@SL_body_copy_ragged:I first heard of "Blindness" a few months back while it was playing at the Cannes Film Festival. I knew of director Fernando Meirelles work, having seen and loved both "The Constant Garner" and the brilliant "City of God."

Imagine my surprise when I heard that "Blindness" was ripped apart by the critics at the festival. I must admit I was more curious about what was so wrong with this supposedly "horrible" film by a proven director, than I was about the film itself. I hadn't seen a single trailer for it and was intrigued.

The film is set in Anycity, Anycountry, Planet Earth, an unrecognizable cosmopolitan area that just barely looks like a cross between Prague, London, Paris and New York, done on purpose to make this event seem to be a global phenomenon.

The event in question is that one day, while stopped in traffic, a young motorist suddenly becomes blind. A good Samaritan takes him to the eye doctor, and as a result, the Samaritan, the eye doctor and everyone else they come in contact with go blind within a matter of hours. A quarantine begins, with the army leading the blind into "hospitals" and left to fend for themselves, being given a ration of food once a week. Only one person, the eye doctor's wife (played by Julianne Moore) is immune to the "phenomenon" and lies about being blind to gain entry to the "hospital" with her husband. This poses the question: What would you do if you were the only one in the world who could see?

My main gripe with the film is that it takes way too much time in the first act and not enough time in the third act. The spread of the disease and the quarantine take up almost half of the film, while their eventual third act escape into the desolation of the empty cities lasts only maybe 15 or so minutes of this 2-plus hour film. Add to that the fact that the cinematography was extremely annoying. Just because the movie is about blind people doesn't mean you have to use crazy exposures and extremely shallow depth of field in every shot. We get it. They can't see. Halfway through I was beginning to think that I was going blind myself. Oh wait, maybe that was the point. Ooh, clever.

The film was not as bad as I had heard, but worse than I expected. Although I wanted to walk out during the first act, by the end of the second I didn't want the film to end. See "Blindness," it will grow on you.