Blindness

Having had some personal experience of sudden loss of vision, I found the opening scenes of this film quite chilling. I waited for it to become your average disaster movie. It doesn’t. Some of the elements are there: panic in the streets, a small band of survivors. The trailer makes it look quite like Cloverfield. But as well as being entertaining, this is a film which has some serious things to say.

In a deliberately anonymous big city, a car stalls at the lights. As the traffic builds up behind him, the driver begins to scream out: “I’m blind!” In a very short time the people he has come into contact with also go blind, all seeing not blackness, but just white light. It soon becomes obvious that this unusual type of blindness is an infection and the victims are put into quarantine. When a doctor (Mark Ruffalo) is quarantined, his wife (well played by Julianne Moore) insists on going with him, pretending that she, too, is blind, although she can actually see.

The infection spreads on a large scale and life changes dramatically. But the focus is on the fairly small number who have been quarantined, with the doctor’s wife soon finding herself playing a vital role.

There have been protests from organisations working on behalf of blind people about the fact that the film portrays blind people as helpless, needing a sighted person to lead them. I was aware of this criticism before I saw the film, and I have to say that I don’t think it’s justified. The film shows blind people behaving badly and blind people behaving well. On the whole we see that blindness doesn’t change one’s personality, something borne out by my own experience of blind friends. Blindness doesn’t remove racial prejudice or sexism, for example, as shown in the film. Equally, a person who is courageous and generous will remain so without sight and won’t become someone who leads a lesser life.

But there is a world of difference between going either gradually or suddenly blind in normal society and the situation portrayed in the film, where almost everyone becomes blind in a very short time and what we are seeing is just the first few weeks of this.

Meanwhile, back in quarantine things get really nasty as food runs out and violence and squalor take over. This could easily have been overdone and there were moments when I felt it was going that way, but the human relationships are not forgotten. We see how the blindness of one partner begins to affect the balance of the relationship, and this is dealt with realistically, not sentimentalised. Eventually the doctor does begin to adapt and, having come to the rescue of his wife, regains his confidence.

The device of “white blindness” is well used and much more innovative than darkness. Images start to appear, then fade back into brightness as new arrivals come in. Sometimes sound is used with a blank white screen. As a counterpoint to the violence, there is a beautifully lit scene of the women gently washing the body of one who has died.

There were some details which didn’t quite work, like the fact that everyone goes around barefoot, which in an alien environment would make one feel much more vulnerable, as would going naked. Wearing clothes, especially one’s own, is about much more than being seen. Mysteriously, later in the film, everyone in the group seems to have their own shoes. And one thing you don’t need help with when you can’t see is signing your name. But these are minor details.

This is a thought-provoking film which I found very absorbing. On one point, however, I do agree with the protesters. As far as I know, all the actors in the film were sighted people. Would it really have been too difficult to cast blind actors?