Blindness
Directed by Fernando Meirelles, the psychological thriller Blindness is set for release in the U.S. in August 2008. Its plot is based on a novel written by Nobel Prize winner Portuguese writer Jose Saramago. The movie is about a blindness epidemic that occurs in an unknown city, but soon threatens to devastate the whole of society. The local authorities panic and confine the blind to an asylum surrounded by soldiers. A group of people, led by a doctor’s wife who pretends to be blind in the movie, survives and has to contend with the breakdown of order.
The New York Times reports that “the consequence is a disappointingly ordinary horror-thriller that seems to aspire to more trenchant mystery than it holds.”
The main problem with the piece is that Mr. Tantalo has streamlined the novel’s narrative to the point of draining it of moral complexity. The philosophical reflectiveness that Mr. Saramago tucked lightly into his gripping storytelling is largely gone, as is most of the behavior that complicates a simplistic victim-perpetrator dynamic within the asylum.
According to Spill.com, the scenes in Blindness are shot in Canada; in the cities Sao Paolo and Toronto.
A Brazilian/Canadian co-production shot in Sao Paolo and Toronto, Blindness features a script by producer and co-star McKeller, who optioned the novel alongside Rhombus Media’s Niv Fichman.
The short trailer of the movie is available at Videodetective.