Blindness

Dystopian cinema is a wonderful medium to work in, especially now when more than ever we pirouette precariously on the precipice of complete global collapse. If the E! Channel is to be believed; we’ll all be crapping in massive communal pools and eating our dogs by 2012. Ok, maybe that’s just the internalised vision that springs to my mind whenever I Ryan Seacrest (slowly becoming higher up on the ‘They’ve got to go’ list every time I see his smug little face). It isn’t entertainment unless it’s got a Corey in it, that’s the law. Anyway, back to my point. We’re all doomed. HG Wells knew it, Snake Plissken knows it and Alan Moore knows it. It’s an age where there are companies who have databases of your grocery shopping fer krisssakes (or what did you think those clubcards were for?); people have less and less free choice and privacy than ever before.

An unexplained epidemic of blindness falls upon an unnamed city. The disease is infectious and easily spread and so the government quickly ship everyone off to mandatory quarantine centres. The centres are heavily guarded, but have no internal staff, leaving the blind to (don’t say lead the blind, don’t say lead the blind, you can do better than that, come on now, don’t, don’t do it, not even a News of the World journalist would do that) provide care and facilities for themselves (good lad, have another coffee). Julianne Moore (Yayy!) and Mark Ruffalo (Booo!) play an unnamed couple (nobody is deemed with a moniker in this movie, neither are any of the locations which was a nice touch). Ruffalo is struck down with the blindness early on (Yayyy!) and is told to wait at his house for collection and instant transportation to quarantine; Moore is unable to leave him and feigns blindness to accompany him. Strangely immune to the disease, Moore assists the others as best she can in the disgusting mess that they are sectioned to. Armed guards threaten to shoot anyone who approaches them and so cries of sanitary and nutritional difficulties are ignored.

As more and more ‘patients’ are drafted in, the collapse of any form of order wonderfully mirrors the representations of the collapse of the outside world. Buses plough into streams of traffic as drivers are struck down, soon all amenities are gone. The city is plunged into darkness and people take to looting the streets. Meanwhile inside the quarantine, man’s inherent evil is taking precedence, with some of the most shocking and memorable scenes of brutality that I have seen in considerable time, especially in a movie with big name stars. Gael García Bernal is delightfully nasty, Danny Glover is the polar opposite, playing the sweet and wise old man with an eye patch role that is essential for the success of any good story.

So, while it all goes to hell and before the screaming hordes come battering down your door, dragging you from the couch and disemboweling you to make cardigans, I would loot/borrow/buy a copy of this. The tension builds greatly but there are several points at which they could have chose to end the movie which would have been more suitable than their chosen one. Still, this doesn’t detract from what is a very clever and highly enjoyable slice of Dystopian Doggy Pie.

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