Movie Review: "Blindness", 2008

Okay, this is a movie review for the film Blindness, with Julianne Moore as the lead female. It is going to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it, so you may want to skip it if you plan to. Pretty much, this is a movie about a weird disease of some kind making everyone blind. Everyone goes blind except Julianne Moore. They get taken to a quarantine zone, and Julianne Moore tells them she is blind so she can stay with her husband, but she isn't blind she can see, so it gives her a great advantage over the blind folk, and also makes them very dependent on her.

She does her best to preserve order and care for everyone but the quarantine that they are in eventually falls into disrepair; the government has assured them someone is coming to take them somewhere eventually, but nobody ever does and when one or two people have tried to leave, they were shot, so everyone just stays put. This is the first thing that irks me. Nobody tries to do anything, Julianne Moore just continues to wipe everyone's asses for them instead of figuring out what the fuck is going on when she is really the only one that can.

Anyway eventually the wards begin warring, and one ward is hoarding the food and collecting valuables from the others in exchange for food. After a week, once they've collected all the valuables, they ask for women. This is an interesting thing to note; these blind people ask for valuables, like jewelry and money, like WTF are they going to do with valuables?! From a psychological point of view, it was probably just a test to get these people to give things of value to them up so that they could then ask for something even worse; like a woman's dignity. She may not have been willing to do something like that at first, but after being worn down by giving up everything else, she may then feel pressured to do so. So then there's a whole dirty orgy scene, and I mean dirty- for one, let me note, the movie is visually dissatisfying in every single way- almost as if to say, since the movie is called BLINDNESS, we're going to make it almost impossible to follow what the fuck is going on in the movie by having it be blurry and unfocused and jittery at times, and at times we will even just have total darkness or total whiteness blinding the screen. This thematic ingenuity playing off the name of the movie did not impress me. So that's the first reason the orgy scene was dirty. The second is because at this point, they had been in the quarantine for quite a while, and it really just looks gross, and many of them appear very unclean and nasty looking. So all in all, it wasn't sexy. Even Julianne Moore, who CAN see, still goes through with the orgy. Why did these women decide to do this? Like, a bunch of BLIND PEOPLE are DEMANDING shit, and sh can see, but she doesn't try to stop it? Hell, I would just sneak in there at night and kill them all.

Also, at various points in the film it does flicker to a pair of scissors and then to her, like she is thinking about doing something. After this happens a few times she finally DOES take them, goes into the other ward and kills a guy. But instead of doing it quickly and quietly she makes a big-ass scene and causes all kinds of hell. She doesn't even ATTEMPT to take the gun away from them, the one thing they used to threaten the other wards into cooperating. So, let's continue. Finally Julianne Moore sets fire to the ward and leads mostly the good ones out. They wander through the city and one by one the blind people get lost like dumb asses until there are only a few left. To sum it up, Julianne Moore saves them all in a very slow way, and at the very, very end the guy who first became blind suddenly can see again, indicating that perhaps it was temporary and the rest will recover as well.

So that sums up the storyline. Some other things I'd like to make note of, is that the movie was very slow, and the ending really lets you down. Somewhere along the line, I would have liked to know why this blindness suddenly hit like it did, and why it suddenly went away, and why the fuck Julianne Moore's character did not get it when it looks like everyone else did. I mean, if someone knew she could still see they would have tested her to try to figure out why, and instead of the whole world dying maybe she had an antibody or some shit. It just doesn't make alot of sense. Also, there is so much more Julianne Moore could have done in that ward, like killing the bad guys. But she DOESN'T! She doesn't help them escape until the very end! She is even seen standing outside in the courtyard with no guards around and still does not choose to leave. This makes me think, in a totally absurd analyzation of her psyche, maybe in her life before this blindness thing came along she was not really necessary, and the sudden dependence these other people have on her, along with her mother hen role, made her feel important, so instead of doing something to stop it she just prolonged it until she could no longer. But like I said, that's total speculation. Also, Sam Jackson himself was in this film! But his part was extremely small and crappy, and I was disappointed in that. There were also alot of weird scenes that were meant to inspire a sense of maybe faith, in mankind, I'm not sure, but people would be like, dancing together in the rain and shit and slow chords would play. It was supposed to be meaningful, but in reality it was just boring.

It was good for the first hour and a half, just the last thirty minutes was really disappointing.