Draw your own conclusions… BLINDNESS

Flip Wilson and Britney Spears agree: What you see is what you get. 

But what do you get when you can’t see anything? Chaos? Madness? Hope?

In BLINDNESS, options are offered, few of them pleasant, when a pandemic robs an entire society of its sight, one at a time.

Adapted by Canadian multi-hyphenate Don McKellar — who penned the hilarious HIGHWAY 61 — from Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago‘s eponymous novel, the movie is less interested in a defining answer than in the defining actions of those who succumb to the affliction — not sightlessness, but amoral self-preservation. Some might argue that “man’s inhumanity to man” is nothing new and they are right. What they may be neglecting is the film’s fourth act. McKellar has constructed the screenplay in typical three-act fashion, but the closing image — which some critics deride as “hopeful” — may be bleaker than it first appears and demand audiences continue the tale once the credits have rolled. It is the suggestiveness of BLINDNESS‘ faux-climax that compels. Julianne Moore surveys the cityscape and whereas some sense that Jimmy Cliff may as well be crooning “I can see clearly now,” I’d argue it will not be a bright sunshiney day. There may be blue skies ahead, but very dark times indeed. 

Americans should be well accustomed to denial. It is easy to maintain ignorance when the obstacle of truth is shrouded in darkness. (It’s the difference between thinking your lover is cheating on you and knowing she is.) That’s why many officials are so adamant about secreting sensitive memorandums, erasing incriminating e-mails or destroying classified videos outright. When reality can be plainly seen (and read and replayed), the pain and bad feelings will never disappear. 

Fernando (CITY OF GOD; THE CONSTANT GARDNER) Merielles composes his images wisely, innovatively, allowing viewers to lurch between the milky inadequacies of the stricken to the damning, gritty clarity of Ms. Moore’s visionary lead. During some sequences, one wonders if it might be preferable to be left in the dark. No such luck. The rapes, the degradations, the defecations are all visible. We’re in the shit along with all the quarantined.

Look all around, look straight ahead: there’s nothin’. Guess Flip was right: what we get is what we see. Only problem, unlike his iconic character Geraldine, we can no longer excuse ourselves: The Devil made me do it.

What do you THINK? If you haven’t yet, watch BLINDNESS then draw your own conclusions. And, please, share them here on The Warren Report.