“Son, when you get to the hotel room…Call me”

Hours later he gets to the hotel room with his beautiful blushing bride and he calls his father,

“Dad, we are the hotel, what do I do?”

“O.K. Son, listen up, take off your clothes and get in the bed, then she should take off her clothes and get in the bed, if not help her. Then either way, ah, call me”

A few moments later…

“Dad we took off our clothes and we are in the bed, what do I do?”

O.K. Son, listen up. Move real close to her and she should move real close to you, and then… Ah, call me.”

A few moments later…

“DAD! WE TOOK OFF OUR CLOTHES, GOT IN THE BED AND MOVED REAL CLOSE, WHAT DO I DO???”

“O.K. Son, Listen up, this is the most important part. Stick the long part of your body into the place where she goes to the bathroom.”

A few moments later…

“Dad, I’ve got my foot in the toilet, what do I do?”

Can anyone support my view that Julianne Moore’s character is actually blind and everything is allegorical for her coming to terms with it?

Welcome.

Just wanted to comment on a few things about the movie. I’ve read the book and I definitely recommend it. One, it’s an amazing book, but also it will enhance your appreciation for the film. It was a pretty faithful adaptation, and where it isn’t faithful in plot, it’s still definitely faithful in tone. One thing I love is the film opens and closes very nearly to the book: it opens on a red stop light, and it ends with Julianne Moore looking into the sky and then down to the city.

Now, I think the ending is pretty fantastic. In the book, she looks into the sky and the clouds and and brightness make her see white. She then says “It’s my turn” but when she looks down to the city it’s still there. In the movie, she doesn’t say anything, but visually it’s very much how i pictured the ending when I read it. There’s something sad and quiet about this ending that I love. It sort of hints at these feelings her character has, of somehow being left out of the experience.

You two talked in the podcast about how everything goes back to normal so it feels like nothing ultimately happened, but I think the important thing in this movie is that they HAVE to go back to normal. They’ll again be able to see but will be pretty much irrevocably changed by the whole experience. That’s the change, not in the setting, but within the characters. Julianne Moore, meanwhile, didn’t share this. She definitely changed, having to become more of a leader and take charge, but the ending suggests her being left out almost.

Also, I agree about the passage of time. It becomes very vague and fluid very quickly. I don’t think this is a bad thing, though. It almost feels like we, as viewers are experiencing this timeless world, just like the blind are. They too lost track of time. Having specific cues as to the days or weeks passing would be pointless, because the days don’t matter to the people anymore. They realize that their sense of time was largely influenced by their sight.

anyway, sorry to just break in here, but thought i would drop my thoughts in the bucket.

Also the last clips of the cut I saw included a church steeple and that evokes allusions to forgiveness, or reconciliation, or revelation, and that came right before her saying in voice-over ‘I’m Blind’… so it was laid out pretty clearly… but perhaps he wanted to veil it a bit.

to clarify, in the final night in the house everyone comes to terms with their condition, and that would make sense that the vision returned (or things reversed) as the allegorical person found dignity in her situation and no longer needed a fantasy. The film is a parable about regaining control of your life.

merely a dystopic future story, I don’t know, that to me doesn’t work.

But since the film is as much about implied threat and how to address the implied threat right before (or during) it becoming reality, I can swallow that wiffle-waffle is she going to go blind or not ending. Actually, the more I think about it, this ending may leave it up to the viewer as to whether or not she is going to go blind, or whether or not everyone else will go blind again.

Thus the film becomes a bit of a metaphor for getting old. It can happen when you least expect it and one is often not prepared. And authority and privilege are snatched away by the younger generation and disability.

This is certainly the case when Ruffalo’s character goes blind. I think it was great that they put an eye doctor in there not for exposition, but rather having to have him join the patients while his wife steps up. I really, really liked this aspect of the story, often the strongest, most successful folks fall the hardest when disability/suffering is thrust upon them.

Which reminds me. I love the scene with Braga and Glover taking in the firelight and having an intimate conversation. He simply asks if anyone is listening to their conversation before he says something. No one in today’s world would speak up of course because they are curious to hear the conversation – which is what they did.

I wonder though, in this world over time, if social “rules” would change so that that sort of question would be honestly answered – i.e. “Yes, we’re right here, so don’t say anything that is private.”

no, you have to have them recover to have the full effect of Glover’s arc, that is great, and I think the inverse reality scenario takes nothing away from the story, it enriches it. like I said before it does not have to be quite so literal, its allegorical. I mean on a very simple level it is inversing the plight of a single blind person, the world has gone blind with one person seeing… it is very much playing off of the emotional effects of the condition, its about walking in another person’s shoes… in this case the person with sight being a representative for the solitude of the blind… its not necessary that everything be thought of as a dream sequence that fits squarely in the story, but it is ‘magical realism’, there is a reason other than to propel the basic plot forward that this scenario exists, and I think in the original cut Meirelles made it clear that in the final moments of the film as Julianne Moore goes blind, it is like the inverse world reversing, and you get a glimpse of the other side of this magical realism, and man that IS the movie… The central themes are about power struggles, and dignity, and these are integral to what people with disabilities go through daily… think of what it must be like to have someone caretaking over you, think of what that does to you… the emotional core of this film is of a disabled person walking in the shoes of her caretaker (allegorically not literally) of exploring the world from the other side and earning her dignity through the trials that are put before her. Once the story comes to a point of stasis, the bubble pops and the inverse image is removed.

Yeah. One guy gets his sight back. No one else does. Everyone is so happy too – except Glover who is sitting on the couch with a very defeated look.

wait a second, its only inferred that everyone has got their sight back?… how does that work? There is several minutes of them with their sight back in my cut, and that is where one of the best scenes occurs, with Glover in a corner quietly coming to the realization that his hope of love is gone.

The everyone stays blind ending with Moore being queen bee is also interesting because it looks at the burdens of leadership, this is echoed through-out the film with Moores self imposed victim-hood and mothering of her clan. She is cleaning up the shit and doing the grunt work, despite being in the position of greatest privilege (as opposed to Ward 3′s lording the ‘all men’ with a gun and a naturally blind person for guidance). Of course, her mothering and care-giving threatens her marriage significantly and she drops the moral-highground with a pair of scissors – for the greater good or to stop the ongoing atrocities. She is always at the head of the line of trailing blind folks, and the line always slows her down. I liked how that developed and flowed over the film.

The one person recovers ending undermines the weight of the film for me…almost like – it was all a dream (I really don’t like how the majority of films go about what they go about just to come back to the same spot at the beginning, with the only offer being: “and things were never the same afterwards”).

Having the tables reversed may work in a Grimm fairytale, but it doesn’t do much for me either. And if one wants to read the whole thing as a mind-fantasy as Moore slowly went blind, well, I can’t really buy that, it doesn’t make any sense in the narrative at all.

As one who doesn’t mind the notion of a “depressing” ending, I have to admit I was really hoping this wouldn’t end that way. I was sure Moore was going to fall down the stairs and crack her head open when she was searching for food in the dark, below the supermarket – leaving her husband on the street and the other group of people all waiting in that house. I would’ve been very disappointed in that ending and was sure that was where it was heading.

But, I also kind of agree with Kurt that I’m not sure I like the idea of everyone getting their sight back (which we don’t know for sure is the case, though certainly inferred). I would’ve liked the open-ended thought of Moore having to “take care of the world” as the only seeing leader of a race of people who are blind. Not a happy ending, but not a depressing one either. Just sort of open-ended and thought provoking.

the notion of a psyche-out ending is just dumb. He originally had it with her going blind but I guess people cannot handle a somewhat depressing ending, going through all the shit people want a happy ending. ugh.

and I totally agree Andrew about time lapses not being adequately conveyed throughout the film… there was something a bit off about that, which probably worked better in the book.

Oh yeah, and I thought the trickery at the end was kind of weird too with Moore going blind and then…. PSYCHE!

Kind of lame, but not that big of a deal.

Finally caught this last night. Excellent film. I also enjoyed the human element and as we got closer to the end I started wondering if humanity would survive if this actually happened. Probably would and then I started to wonder if the world might actually be a better place once the disease is accepted. This is where race and Glover’s character came into play. I would’ve liked to see Rot’s version with Glover’s voice-over.

PROBLEMS: Few, but one I had with the movie was the unbelievability of “the ward”. Sure there’s going to be some bad seeds in there and sure the “Andersonville” theory is going to take hold. But 1) I couldn’t tell how much time was passing and it seemed to me that things devolved rather quickly once Bernal’s character showed up. Would that many people really start raping women after only (what seemed like) a few days? But worse than that was 2) the fact that Moore’s character took the abuse for so long. She was a strong character with a HUGE advantage. I think it’s not very realistic that she waited so long to “attack.” People were starving and a few blind people were hoarding all the food? C’mon, no one would have stood for that; particularly when a gun was held to her husband’s throat and they got shorted on food after everyone gave up their wedding rings, etc. Frustrating and came close to ruining the movie for me. But the rest of it was stellar.

These sorts of films work on two different levels, its not so much about subtext as subconscious, its really the apex of the medium in my opinion.

Forgot to say that COUNTRY WEDDING was another great one this year. Still nowhere near the calibre of 2007. But still lots of good stuff out there.

**SPOILERS CONTINUE**

Back to Blindness, Yes the theatrical version I just saw (minutes ago) had two Glover voice-overs one in the middle of the movie (after he is discovered with the radio) and one at the end of the film as the camera stays on Julianne Moore’s face. I’m now unsure as to whether or not the last voice-over was there when I saw the Press Screening at TIFF. It probably was if my memory serves. I agree with Dave…Moore appears to be going blind, before the film gives the visual cue that she sees the city. I don’t think I would have liked the Moore-Goes-Blind ending…as it stands, other than the broad-human nature element, I really don’t like that everyone gets their sight back at the end. I want the “LAST MAN ON EARTH” ending, you know, the one that goes, ‘In the Land of the Blind, the Ju-li-anne is King!’ and that society can only be civil if the ‘good guys’ have a major privilege over the thrumming hordes. It’s an interesting mix of cynical ending and happy ending, it would have been the more satisfying one for this picture.

On the other hand, this time around I really dug on all the ‘human’ moments buried in amongst the heavier-handed broad-society story. There are both good and bad moments in the film. People struggling and doing less then noble things under the circumstances. Unable to keep dignity or maintain the moral high-ground, yet keep on going. The exclusion of the masses to maintain the privledges of ‘civility’ is a uniquely 80/20 principle (in the world 20% of the population has 80% of the wealth, much of this due to implicit military and financial might. I love Braga’s character’s pun-ny joke, “I’m so glad we have a leader with Vision”

And I stand by my previous column that the most fascinating thing about Blindness is how people acquire and use privilege.

And the cinemtography in this film is simply stunning.

As Dave and Mike have said, with some of the ‘lord of the flies’ hammer, many may fail to notice all the subtleties layers and nuance percolating through the mix.

Certainly one of the best, (maybe even THE BEST) of 2008. Sad that many people will not likely pick up on this until 5 to 10 years from now. Or is it just me?

I saw blindness this weekend and have to say that I got the sense that they left Julianne Moore sight ambiguous and only inferred that everyone else would regain their sight.

Re: Danny Glover voice over. I remember it at least 2 times and felt like it stuck out like a sore thumb. I loved hearing his story but I was like… why am I hearing this? Did we hear other thoughts? I think we may have, but his was totally narration. Very odd choice.

I didn’t see the initial Mark Ruffalo taking care of Julianne Moore’s character, she seemed to barely take notice of him. I actually thought Julianne Moore’s character disempowered Mark Ruffalo’s because of her sight he never really gained the skills to take care himself. Ironically, those are the things that made it feel like a real relationship.

Overall the film was way harsher than I thought it would be, so I’m still processing it. The gender stuff was brutal on so many levels.