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Blindness
Miramax Films


5.9

based on 31 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 51 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity.

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, and Danny Glover

It begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters – his wife, his doctor, even the seemingly good Samaritan who gives him a lift home – will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As the contagion spreads, and panic and paranoia set in across the city, newly blind victims of the “White Sickness” are rounded up and quarantined within a crumbling, abandoned mental asylum, where all semblance of ordinary life begins to break down. (Miramax Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Mystery \| Romance \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Don McKellar
DIRECTED BY:	Fernando Meirelles
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 10, 2009 Theatrical: October 3, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	120 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada \| Brazil \| Japan
LANGUAGE(S):	English \| Japanese

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

It's a rattling, heartrending performance (Moore) in, yes, a long, hard slough of a film – one that is well worth the journey, if not a repeat trip.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It engaged me throughout and I found the ending to be surprisingly hopeful.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something.

Portland Oregonian Stan Hall

Visually nervy, beautifully acted, intense and philosophically compelling, it struggles to connect emotionally as it wrestles with the challenging source material.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A perversely enjoyable, occasionally harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 disaster allegory.

New York Post Kyle Smith

I kept hoping the meaning would click into place, but it never quite did.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It's more like a filmed allegory.

Empire Staff (Not credited)

Handicapped by pretensions to making big statements, Blindness is still gripping, disturbing and intermittently powerful.

NPR Bob Mondello

Moore is always watchable, Ruffalo and Bernal get a nice rivalry going without ever establishing eye contact (as it were), and Danny Glover has some nice moments in an underdeveloped part as an older man who finds, to his benefit, that love is blind.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

As the players enact the fall and rebirth of civilization, Meirelles suggests that even a society gone to hell looks better with a little music-video-like pizzazz.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

There's a good movie here, but we get it in pieces that are sometimes hard to decipher.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A brilliant idea that seems to lack the vision to be great.

Washington Post Neely Tucker

An arresting, often riveting film that is fascinating to look at but not nearly so interesting to watch.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Not a great film, mainly because it can't transcend -- and, indeed, lays bare -- the intellectual flimsiness of its source. But it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like. For all its chin-rubbing, brow-furrowing attitudes, it does not, in the end, give you much to think about. But there is, nonetheless, a lot here to see.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.

Variety Justin Chang

Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

This film is very different: chilly, methodical, a slave to 10-ton metaphor as opposed to metaphoric provocation.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

For all its pretension and artiness, Blindness is more like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (which at least had the decency to be fast-paced and short), right down to its upbeat and inane conclusion.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

You get the film's message, that mankind does not react well when challenged by unpleasantness it can't explain away, within the first 15 minutes -- leaving more than 100 minutes to ponderously belabor the point.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The trouble with Blindness is that it’s so preoccupied with shouldering this symbolic weight that it gradually forgets to tell a story--to keep faith with the directives of common sense.

Village Voice Anthony Kaufman

Unflinching at best and treacly at worst, the film unveils its apocalyptic scenario with visceral intensity, but lacks the emotional sophistication to rise above schadenfreude kicks.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

An extended metaphor for the condition of man, and boy is it extended. In the course of two hours that crawl by like four and a half.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Blindness is one of the most unpleasant, not to say unendurable, films I've ever seen.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

What was presumably intended to play like a fable plays, instead, like an overly long car commercial crossed with a scare-mongering public service announcement.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

After a powerful opening, when we see the first victim suddenly go blind while driving in traffic, the film devolves into a dystopian freak show and wastes many wonderful performers, including Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore.

New York Daily News Staff (Not credited)

Piles on the indignities, violence and island-of-man turmoil.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

The able cast can't swim through the muck.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This ends on an uplifting and philosophical note, equating moral blindness with the literal sort, which you'll probably appreciate if you haven't already slit your wrists.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.9 (out of 10) based on 51 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Stephanie s. gave it a7:
Michelle S, seriously? you obviously missed the point of the novel. if you even read the novel. the movie stayed true to the spirit of the book and i think anybody could appreciate that.

Adam L gave it a9:
I think this movie was solid all the way through. It didnt stray from looking at the lowest parts of humanity that appear in a crises. This is not a feel-good movie, as perhaps the red number people may have hoped. But I think it was well done. Its an art film . There are plenty of squeamish scenes and if you dont want to leave your comfort zone , don't watch this movie. Because it will make you think and perhaps yell at the screen !

Justin M gave it a9:
A very engaging movie that examines the ability of mankind to cope with disaster. Tough to watch at times but necessary to appreciate the end.

VS. D gave it a0:
Ugh. Terrible, terrible film.

Michelle S gave it a0:
Anyone who gives this move a decent, let alone good score, is either blind themselves or enjoys long, boring and extremely offensive movies. Lets not forget it lacks logic, reason or explanation. I'm not asking you to spell everything out chapter and verse, but a simple "this is why everyone is going blind" or "this is why ONE person in the entire world is NOT blind". Something! You continue to sit through this movie thinking you will have some answers and instead you just get to be offended over and over again by disturbing scenes filled with unnecessary nudity, filth including people stepping in human poop (in the hallways mind you because apparently if you go blind you no longer understand the concept of a toilet) a mass orgy/rape (not once but TWICE). I could go on and on about how bad this movie is, but in all honesty I can't talk about it anymore, its making me angry. I am GLAD I had a free rental for this movie because I would feel even more sick to my stomach if I had paid anything for this piece of garbage!

justin gave it a2:
horrible , screwed up rape scenes made u feel sick to your stomach . and stuff like how the guard were there one day giving them food and the next day the whole world has gone blind was totally inaccurate and other little details the people that gave it a 10 were probably on crack or something maybe that would make the movie better and there were good actors the movie was just so bad that you couldn't notice them

Saramango Weeps gave it a2:
The did a great job at ruining one of the best books I've ever read.

Blindness Miramax Films

Blindness
Miramax Films