Netflix: Blindness

Film: Blindness
Year: 2008
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Whose Netflix Queue: Allie's




Allie's Review
Rating: 4 out of 5

The movie Blindness is about an outbreak of some sort of disease that causes everyone to go blind. In the beginning of the outbreak they start to quarantine people, and the leading lady (Julianne Moore) fakes blindness to be able to stay with her blind husband who is being taken away. The twist is that she doesn't end up going blind – for some reason she keeps her eyesight when everyone else looses their vision. She lives in this quarantine area, essentially a prison, with dozens of blind people, and eventually all hell breaks loose. I thought the movie would be more "Outbreak" style, with doctors and scientists rushing to find a cure for the disease... more of a drama/thriller. Oh was I wrong. It was a really dark, disturbing movie about survival. You'd thinking being the only one able to see would be a blessing, but it turns out to be more of a curse. There are several twists in the movie, so I won't ruin it for potential viewers, but they were really clever plot points and great twists. One interesting point is that no one is called by their names in the movie – the movie ends and you don't know any characters names. And there were some really great moments about family and community. My only complaint is that it was a bit slow in the middle, but it picks up again and had a really great ending. Definitely check it out.


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Jon's Review
Rating: 4 out of 5

This film sounds like another 'disease-disaster' movie; i.e., "Mommy I don't feel so good" followed by "You've all been quarantined" followed by "Mr. President, if we don't find this formula, everybody will die" followed by resolution and/or apocalypse. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Blindness is not that type of film. Yes, there is an epidemic, and yes people get quarantined, but the movie focuses instead on what happens when people live in small isolated groups - first the 200 or so in quarantine, and later the small, familial group that escapes. The message was fairly clear to me, that smaller groups are more beneficial for everyone involved, while a comparatively large, semi-structureless society will inevitably fall into chaos. I liked this film because the issues explored were not what I expected, given the premise that I read about.