BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

lauragabrielapires Blindness (2008), directed by Fernando Meirelles, is an adaptation of José Saramago's novel Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira that tells the story of a society that falls victim to a sudden surge of blindness. The film is an extraordinary adaptation. It pictures a lot of the details of the book, such as places and scenes that are fundamental to the plot.The where and when the story happens is not mentioned and to express this idea in the film the director made a great choice by mixing elements of various nationalities. The language used is English, but the license plates look similar to Brazilian plates, the images of the city are taken from cities from different countries and the cast is really diverse. Also, none of the characters has a name, and fortunately this wasn't modified in the movie. As a great fan of the novel, these were the first details that I was expecting to see because they create the perfect atmosphere to the plot. Speaking of plot, just a few things were changed and it didn't bring any harm to the original story. While I was watching, I started to remember certain scenes from the novel and I was trying to imagine how these scenes would be portrayed in the film. I wasn't disappointed at all. Of course some parts were left out, but it wasn't a great loss, they were well adapted to be shorter than the novel. I've seen some negative reviews talking about how the film can cause a bad feeling to the audience, but I can't see how this is a bad thing, because that is exactly the purpose of the whole story. It is to cause discomfort, to show the reality we could live. The graphic scenes can be too strong to the more sensitive but they were unavoidable. All I can say is that Blindness is a well made adaptation that doesn't disappoint those who read the novel. The direction is brilliant, the actors are great and the story is told in full. Even if you didn't read the novel, it is a great way to meet José Saramago's brilliant work.

Lugo1989 The title says it all. One of the most disappointing films I have seen in a while. The story has so many faults that it makes watching this a really frustrating experience.A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant white blindness. Sounds like an interesting premise doesn't it? Well, they ruined it. People who get blind are simply put in a quarantine which is some old abandoned building and they are just left there like animals which seems completely unrealistic. I don't think the authorities would just lock up people, surround the place with armed guards, give them some food, deny any medical assistance and leave them there in a complete mess. And don't forget they are all blind so after a while the place begins to look truly awful.There is also nothing explained where the disease came from, what caused it, how to prevent or cure it.Our main female protagonist is the only one that can still see, somehow she did not get infected and why her sight remained normal is not explained either. I believe she could make much better use of her untouched sight than she did. Especially when a guy who is a self-proclaimed king of one of the wards makes life even more miserable to others by denying some of them food and is feared by many because he has a gun. Since her eyes work she could easily take his gun, hit him in the head with something or react in any other way much sooner than she did thus helping others.After a while they break out of the building and discover they were simply left in the city with many other blind people. At this point the story should really pick up the pace and it simply doesn't. We are left with blind people roaming the city streets, looking for food, they main group that we are following even move in together and all of a sudden live a happy life. I am not going to even lose words on the ending since it's simply too bad to even bother.I am sure some of you are used to watching slow-burners but believe me, this is much too slow. Characters are one-dimensional and sometimes make completely unreasonable decisions, the acting would be the only positive thing here, Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore are not bad at all as well as the supporting cast and that is the only reason why I rated this 2 instead of 1 stars. In conclusion, avoid Blindness and spend 2 hours of your life on something else, anything else.

Andrew Busuioc First things first. The setting of the movie would make you think very early on that you'll be put in a very realistic world where a situation disturbs the normal lives of various citizens but instead you get this world where people don't act like they would in real life and so much so that it constantly reminds you that it's all a script. Because of that the movie doesn't seem as smart and forces you to override your natural senses that tell you that something's wrong. To me, this was the main reason it wasn't a great film.It was impossible to know exactly what the moral, message or goal of this work was. That's assuming of course that it was supposed to convey a message, which I think it initially wanted to do. The lack of clarity on why things were happening and what the meaning behind things happening was ultimately killed this movie. This movie is also very tiring psychologically. There are many visuals that are meant to disturb and amplify the feeling of complete lack of power over your own condition. They worked perfectly for their purpose though. Visuals with feces, blood, infections and open wounds are present and there is plenty of psychological distress coming from the characters during this long, painful story. We had things to carry messages in the movie but no clear message to convey. The ideas were there but they were sadly badly executed. 5/10

RevRonster "Blindness" starts off fantastically. There's some great mystery to it, a whole lot of intrigue, great acting, the potential for some really sympathetic characters, and it has some great commentary about how the human race treats each other when sickness and handicaps come into play. However, the film has a running length that proves to be too long and it sucks away a lot of the potential the film had.At too many points in the story, the narrative drags and, when you combine the fact that various points in the story feel like episodes in something that, overall, feels more like a mini-series than anything else, it makes for a film that feels like it just keeps going and going. Additionally, too many characters are underdeveloped, underused, or just established and forgotten about."Blindness" had a lot of potential working for it and is, for the most part, super interesting and partially-captivating but the elements that work against it hold it back badly and keep it from being something more.Greetings! The name is Rev. Ron and if you feel like reading more of my rants, ramblings, bad jokes, geek references, and other movie reviews (like a more in-depth look at "Blindness" and other films that have potential but never hit it) you can visit my blog at revronmovies.blogspot.com. If you don't want to visit because a horse just walked into a bar and you're all waiting for the bartender to say, "Why the long face?" and is, instead, just being stupid and calling Animal Control, you don't need to visit.