There are a lot of things and situations that can bring a normal, well adjusted human being to the brink of terror. For some it may be a spider or even a clown. Others fear heights or going out in public. Phobias are rampant in our species and the makers of scary movies have played on this for years. While some of these fears may seem irrational to those not afflicted by them some fears are so universal that they have to be considered rational in nature. Most people take being a fully functional person for granted. They wake up every morning, get out of bed and make their morning coffee without a thought to how many parts of our bodies have to work to accomplish something so simple. You hear the shower running, can see wear the kitchen is and can walk over to it. For many people one or more of these standard abilities are diminished or absent. In the spirit of full disclosure here I admit that I do not have the full use of my legs. When so called normal people use a disability for a joke or in a cruel fashion it is wrong. Partly this is a defense mechanism with some of the able bodied because they fear the same thing occurring to them. This type of controversy surrounded the release of a movie where a disability was used as a central theme; ‘Blindness’. Some feel that this is a horror flick where being blind is the terror at hand and members of the blind community spoke out against it.

As a disabled person I do have to interject that I don’t feel that this was the intention of the film makers. To suddenly go blind is a terrible thing and if it happed to a large percentage of the population over a brief period of time as depicted here there would be panic and fear. This is a plot device meant to be more allegorical than insulting. Mass blindness has been used in the past in movies. One notable example that comes to mind is the 1962 cult classic Sci-Fi ‘The Day of the Triffids’. Blindness was a plot device used to frighten the audience with the feeling of helplessness. I have had several friends in my life who were not able to see and they were real, hard working people not helpless and unable to cope. The point being this is just a flick made as a thriller and blindness is a way of bringing the general population into chaos. It is not a slam against those without the sense of sight and it should be considered with that in mind. The bottom line here is if an epidemic of blindness was to hit a country there would be mass hysteria and this story uses that consensus as its foundation. The film is a thriller that has a lot going for it but ultimately just falls short of reaching its goal. This is a prime example of having all the correct ingredients for a fine meal but they just don’t blend together as hoped. It is still a good choice for a home movie night with friends as it is fast moving and overall entertaining as a popcorn flick. The DVD is released by Buena Vista and although this is a Disney division this is not something for the kids to watch; save it for the adults.

The source material for the film came from the novel by José Saramago and was translated to a screenplay by Don McKellar. He has an interesting and diverse resume that includes a little Sundance independent film ‘Childstar’ that is well wroth checking out. It appears that what fascinates McKellar most is placing regular people in extraordinary and extreme situations. In ‘Childstar’ he looked at a normal twelve year old gaining fame and fortune. Here McKellar removes sight from all but a small subset of the population that mostly includes a group of prison inmates. In this story being blind is the catalyst for the dark changes in the characters more then the actual cause for such heinous behavior. The personality traits were already within the characters in the prison quarantine. The rampart blindness gave them license to act out in a way that was previously not possible. It is understandable thought why there was such uproar over the portrayal of blindness here. It is easy to draw and causality between the loss of sight and the loss of all moral restrictions through the way the story unfolds. Actually, unravels would be a better term. The story quickly descends into complete anarchy with little to hold it together but brutality. It is common for a novel to lose sub plots and back stories when being brought to the screen. After reading the novel it is evident that the primary focus was placed on the doctor and his wife at the expenses of most of the other characters. In many cases this streamlining is necessary to get a complex novel into a time frame suitable for a movie. Here the power of the novel was left on the way side. It is a good thriller and entertaining but there was potential for something with far greater depth.

Directing the movie was Fernando Meirelles. Is is well known in his native Brazil and has made a splash in the States with his film ‘The Constant Gardener’ which managed to get two Oscar nominations and one win. This man certainly knows how to construct a film in such a way as to pull in the audience. He paces it very well giving us enough time to get into the situation. There is really no cause given for the mass blindness and if it happened in real life most likely none would be provided so that is acceptable. He treats this film as a means to tell a story of people in the crucible of harsh times. As it progresses an increasing amount of humanity is stripped from the characters. There is an inherent detachment with the characters of the film. None of them have proper names and are referred to only in general terms or by their dominate trait.

In a large city there is an epidemic of sudden blindness. It starts with a scene that is normally chaotic; a traffic jam. When one driver goes blind people initially try to help but soon the condition spreads people are placed in quarantine with a government message playing on an endless loop. In the lockup are a wide variety of people most of whom you would not want to spend any time with at all. There is a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Julianne Moore) as well as a bartender (Gael García Bernal) and a man with a patch over his eye (Danny Glover). Soon a new social order begins to form with the wards of the prison set against each other. A type of feudal structure emerges with the bartender finding a gun and proclaiming himself king of ward three. He extorts food and sex from the others in his cruel reign. The Doctor’s wife is able to see but hides the fact from the others fearful that they will exploit her sight.

Even though the film failed to find its tempo and degraded into an extreme of brutality it does work as a thriller and you can have fun watching it. It would have been nice if the novel was faithfully presented but that would have required a mini series on a premium cable network to pull off. Considering the limitations of the format they cast and crew deported themselves better than you might have thought.