Blindness (film)

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Blindness
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Fernando Meirelles
Produced by	Niv Fichman Andrea Barata Ribeiro Sonoko Sakai
Written by	Don McKellar
Narrated by	Danny Glover
Starring	Julianne Moore Mark Ruffalo
Music by	Uakti
Cinematography	César Charlone
Editing by	Daniel Rezende
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date(s)	September 12, 2008 (US)
Country	Japan Canada Brazil
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Blindness is an upcoming dramatic thriller film that is an adaptation of the 1995 novel Blindness by José Saramago about a society suffering an epidemic of blindness. The film is written by Don McKellar and directed by Fernando Meirelles with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo as the stars. The novel's author originally refused to sell rights for a film adaptation, not wanting it to fall into the wrong hands. Meirelles was able to acquire rights with the condition that the film would be set in an unrecognizable city. The director chose São Paulo as the primary backdrop for Blindness, though scenes were also filmed in Ontario, Canada and Montevideo, Uruguay. With all the characters aside from Julianne Moore's character being blind, the cast was trained to simulate blindness. Meirelles also stylized the film to reflect the lack of point-of-view that the characters would experience. Blindness premiered as the opening film at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2008, and the film is commercially scheduled for limited release in the United States on September 12, 2008.

Contents 1 Premise 2 Production 3 Cast 4 Reception 4.1 Theatrical release 4.2 Critical reaction 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Premise

Based on the 1995 novel Blindness by José Saramago, an epidemic causes blindness in a modern city, resulting in the collapse of society.^[1]

[edit] Production

Rights to the 1995 novel Blindness by José Saramago were first guarded by the author.^[2] Saramago explained, "I always resisted because it's a violent book about social degradation, rape, and I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands." Director Fernando Meirelles had wanted to direct a film adaptation of Blindness in 1997, perceiving it as "an allegory about the fragility of civilization". Saramago originally refused to sell the rights to Meirelles, Whoopi Goldberg, or Gael García Bernal.^[3] Producer Niv Fichman and screenwriter Don McKellar visited the author in the Canary Islands and eventually convinced the author to sell the rights. One of the conditions set by the author was to set the film in a country that would not be recognizable to audiences.^[4] Meirelles also envisioned directing the film in Portuguese similar to the novel's original language, but instead directed the film in English, believing, "If you do it in English you can sell it to the whole world and have a bigger audience."^[5] A change that the director pursued was placing the film in a contemporary setting, as opposed to the novel that he estimated took place in the 1930s or 1940s. Meirelles chose to make a contemporary film so audiences could relate to the characters. He sought advice from the author, who said he did not want to interfere, only requesting for a canine in the novel, the Dog of Tears, to be a big dog.^[6]

By September 2006, Fernando Meirelles was attached to Blindness, with the script being adapted by Don McKellar. Blindness, budgeted at $25 million as part of a Brazilian and Canadian co-production, was slated to begin filming in summer 2007 in the towns of São Paulo and Toronto.^[7] Filming began in early July in São Paulo and Toronto.^[1] Filming also took place in Montevideo, Uruguay.^[8] São Paulo served as the primary backdrop for Blindness, being a city mostly unfamiliar to U.S. and European audiences. With its relative obscurity, the director sought São Paulo as the film's generic location. Filming continued through autumn of 2007.^[2]

Meirelles acknowledged the challenge of making a film that would simulate the experience of blindness to the audience. He explained, "When you do a film, everything is related to point-of-view, to vision. When you have two characters in a dialogue, emotion is expressed by the way people look at each other, through the eyes. Especially in the cut, the edit. You usually cut when someone looks over. Film is all about point-of-view and in this film there is none."^[9] Similar to the book, blindness in the film serves as a metaphor for human nature's dark side: "prejudice, selfishness, violence and willful indifference".^[2]

The cast and crew included 700 extras who had to be trained to simulate blindness. Actor Christian Duurvoort from Meirelles's City of God led a series of workshops to coach the cast members. Duurvoort had researched the mannerisms of blind people to understand how they perceive the world and how they make their way through space. Duurvoort not only taught the extras mannerisms, but also to convey the emotional and psychological states of blind people.^[2] One technique was reacting differently to others as a blind person. Meirelles described, "When you're talking to someone, you see a reaction. When you're blind, the response is much flatter. What's the point?"^[9]

The film also contains visual cues, such as the 1568 painting The Parable of the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Allusions to other famous artworks are also made. Meirelles described the intent: "It's about image, the film, and vision, so I thought it makes sense to create, not a history of painting, because it's not, but having different ways of seeing things, from Rembrandt to these very contemporary artists. But it's a very subtle thing."^[2]

[edit] Cast

• Julianne Moore as Doctor's Wife, the only person immune to the epidemic of blindness.^[10] Her sight is kept a secret by her husband and others, though as time goes on, she feels isolated in being the only one with sight. Moore dyed her red hair blond for the role, believing that it would emulate the "leisure, money, [and] maintenance" of a doctor's wife. The director gave Moore's character a wardrobe that would match the actor's skin and dyed blond hair, giving her the appearance of a "pale angel".^[10]
• Mark Ruffalo as Doctor.^[11] Meirelles originally sought to cast actor Daniel Craig as Doctor, but negotiations were not finalized.^[12] Ruffalo wore a layer of makeup to appear older and also wore contact lenses to be blind while having his eyes open. The actor said of the experience as a blind character, "At first it's terrifying and then it's frustrating and then it gets quiet... we're tormented by our eyesight... you don't know this until you go blind... As an actor I suddenly felt free."^[2]
• Danny Glover as Man with Black Eye Patch.^[10] Glover described his role as a blind person, "When you are blind you try to adopt another kind of sensitivity, so this role is definitely a challenge from a physical point of view."^[13]
• Gael García Bernal as Bartender/King of Ward 3,^[14] the film's villain. Meirelles followed the advice of Brazilian stage director Antunes Filho and changed the character from the novel by making him more ambiguous, explaining, "In the book, he is really a mean guy, terribly evil from the beginning... but I thought it was more interesting to have him be not evil but more like a child with a gun."^[5]
• Alice Braga as Woman with Dark Glasses.^[14]
• Sandra Oh as Minister of Health.^[10]
• Yusuke Iseya as First Blind Man.^[14]
• Yoshino Kimura as First Blind Man's Wife.^[14]
• Don McKellar as Thief.^[14] McKellar wrote the screenplay for the film.^[10]
• Maury Chaykin as Accountant.^[14]
• Mitchell Nye as Boy.^[14]
• Susan Coyne as Receptionist.^[10]
• Martha Burns as Woman with Insomnia.^[10]

Director Fernando Meirelles chose an international cast. Producer Niv Fichman explained Meirelles's intent: "He was inspired by [Saramago's] great masterwork to create a microcosm of the world. He wanted it cast in a way to represent all of humanity."^[15]

[edit] Reception

[edit] Theatrical release

Prior to public release, the director screened Blindness to test audiences. Meirelles described the impact of test screenings: "If you know how to use it, how to ask the right questions, it can be really useful." A test screening of Meirelles' first cut in Toronto resulted in ten percent of the audience, nearly 50 people, walking out of the film early. Meirelles ascribed the problem to a scene of sexual violence that took place partway through the film, and the director edited the scene to be much shorter in the final cut.^[16] Meirelles explained his goal, "When I shot and edited these scenes, I did it in a very technical way, I worried about how to light it and so on, and I lost the sense of their brutality. Some women were really angry with the film, and I thought, 'Wow, maybe I crossed the line.' I went back not to please the audience but so they would stay involved until the end of the story."^[5] The director also found that a New York test screening expressed a uniquely American concern about a victim in the film failing to conduct an act of revenge. Meirelles believed this concern to reflect what Americans have learned to expect in their cinema.^[16]

Focus Features acquired the right to handle international sales for Blindness.^[17] Pathé acquired U.K. and French rights to distribute Blindness.^[18] Miramax Films won U.S. distribution rights to Blindness with its $5 million bid.^[19] Blindness premiered as the opening film at the 61st Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2008,^[20] where it received a "tepid reception".^[21] Britain's Screen Daily and France's Le Film Français published straw polls of critics at Cannes. The British poll of five critics reflected reactions that ranged from "poor" to "average". The French poll of eight critics had a wider range of reaction, reflecting at minimum a one zero-star review and at maximum a three-star review.^[22]

Blindness will commercially open in a limited release in the United States on September 12, 2008.^[23]

[edit] Critical reaction

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter described Blindness as "provocative" but "predictable cinema", startling but failing to surprise. Honeycutt criticized the film's two viewpoints: Julianne Moore's character, the only one who can see, is slow to act against atrocities, and the behavior of Danny Glover's character comes off as "slightly pompous". Honeycutt explained, "This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles' film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action."^[24] Justin Chang of Variety described the film: "Blindness emerges onscreen both overdressed and undermotivated, scrupulously hitting the novel's beats yet barely approximating, so to speak, its vision." Chang thought that Julianne Moore gave a strong performance but did not feel that the film captured the impact of Saramago's novel.^[25]

Stephen Garrett of Esquire complimented the director's style: "Meirelles [honors] the material by using elegant, artful camera compositions, beguiling sound design and deft touches of digital effects to accentuate the authenticity of his cataclysmic landscape." Despite the praise, Garrett believed that the Meirelles's talent at portraying real-life injustice in City of God and The Constant Gardener did not suit him for directing the "heightened reality" of Saramago's social commentary.^[26]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site and trailer
• Blindness at the Internet Movie Database
• Blindness at Allmovie
• Blindness at Rotten Tomatoes
• Blindness Official international press release and production information.