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Blindness
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 31 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 58 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Mystery | Romance | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Don McKellar
Directed by: Fernando Meirelles
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 3, 2008
DVD: February 10, 2009
Running Time: 120 minutes, Color
Origin: Canada | Brazil | Japan
Language(s): English | Japanese
Summary
RATING: R for violence including sexual assaults, language and sexuality/nudity.
Starring Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, and Danny Glover
It begins in a flash, as one man is instantaneously struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world suddenly turned to an eerie, milky haze. One by one, each person he encounters – his wife, his doctor, even the seemingly good Samaritan who gives him a lift home – will in due course suffer the same unsettling fate. As the contagion spreads, and panic and paranoia set in across the city, newly blind victims of the “White Sickness” are rounded up and quarantined within a crumbling, abandoned mental asylum, where all semblance of ordinary life begins to break down. (Miramax Films)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White
Meirelles adds another perspective, that the epidemic might be a good thing if, by being thrown into the darkness together, we may once again recognize the human family to which we all belong.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
It's a rattling, heartrending performance (Moore) in, yes, a long, hard slough of a film – one that is well worth the journey, if not a repeat trip.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
It engaged me throughout and I found the ending to be surprisingly hopeful.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
At times almost unbearably ugly, but by the time you walk out of the theater, you know you've seen something.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Stan Hall
Visually nervy, beautifully acted, intense and philosophically compelling, it struggles to connect emotionally as it wrestles with the challenging source material.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
A perversely enjoyable, occasionally harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's 1995 disaster allegory.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
I kept hoping the meaning would click into place, but it never quite did.
Read Full Review >Empire Staff (Not credited)
Handicapped by pretensions to making big statements, Blindness is still gripping, disturbing and intermittently powerful.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
Moore is always watchable, Ruffalo and Bernal get a nice rivalry going without ever establishing eye contact (as it were), and Danny Glover has some nice moments in an underdeveloped part as an older man who finds, to his benefit, that love is blind.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As the players enact the fall and rebirth of civilization, Meirelles suggests that even a society gone to hell looks better with a little music-video-like pizzazz.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
There's a good movie here, but we get it in pieces that are sometimes hard to decipher.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
A brilliant idea that seems to lack the vision to be great.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Neely Tucker
An arresting, often riveting film that is fascinating to look at but not nearly so interesting to watch.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Not a great film, mainly because it can't transcend -- and, indeed, lays bare -- the intellectual flimsiness of its source. But it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like. For all its chin-rubbing, brow-furrowing attitudes, it does not, in the end, give you much to think about. But there is, nonetheless, a lot here to see.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.
Read Full Review >Variety Justin Chang
Meirelles' slickly crafted drama rarely achieves the visceral force, tragic scope and human resonance of Saramago's prose.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
This film is very different: chilly, methodical, a slave to 10-ton metaphor as opposed to metaphoric provocation.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
For all its pretension and artiness, Blindness is more like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (which at least had the decency to be fast-paced and short), right down to its upbeat and inane conclusion.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
You get the film's message, that mankind does not react well when challenged by unpleasantness it can't explain away, within the first 15 minutes -- leaving more than 100 minutes to ponderously belabor the point.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The trouble with Blindness is that it’s so preoccupied with shouldering this symbolic weight that it gradually forgets to tell a story--to keep faith with the directives of common sense.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Anthony Kaufman
Unflinching at best and treacly at worst, the film unveils its apocalyptic scenario with visceral intensity, but lacks the emotional sophistication to rise above schadenfreude kicks.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
An extended metaphor for the condition of man, and boy is it extended. In the course of two hours that crawl by like four and a half.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Blindness is one of the most unpleasant, not to say unendurable, films I've ever seen.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
A feel-nothing movie – a series of disconnected, implausible incidents that end as arbitrarily as they began, in an effort to inspire emotions the picture never justifies.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
What was presumably intended to play like a fable plays, instead, like an overly long car commercial crossed with a scare-mongering public service announcement.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
After a powerful opening, when we see the first victim suddenly go blind while driving in traffic, the film devolves into a dystopian freak show and wastes many wonderful performers, including Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Staff (Not credited)
Piles on the indignities, violence and island-of-man turmoil.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
This ends on an uplifting and philosophical note, equating moral blindness with the literal sort, which you'll probably appreciate if you haven't already slit your wrists.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 58 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Dudlei O. gave it a10:
Wonderful! I have both read the novel and watched the movie, and it's hard to say which one is better. You can feel the desperation the characters go through. In some scenes I felt breathless, such was the intensity of (both physical and moral) violence. And, as I left the movie theater, I honestly believed, for a few seconds, that everyone around me had gone blind. Such a powerful movie!
Laura K gave it a0:
This was by far one of the worst movies I have ever watched. There was no explanation for anything. I kept watching expecting answers, but instead more questions. Terrible, absolutely terrible.
carlito d gave it a10:
This movie rocks! A must see. Beautifully shot and executed. a flawless piece of what will one day become cult cinema.
Carl A gave it a0:
Everything you read in the "bad reviews" is true and cant be said better. Everything in the "good reviews" you can tell is not how people talk and is artsy praise. Concepts and pretentiousness is not enough to warrant a 1 let alone a 10. This is why people don't listen to critics- because we're smart (IE pirating movies like no tomorrow rather than paying for this crap). This movie is an insult to all facets of your humanity especially your intelligence. These characters aren't humans, they're characters written with no common sense. Blindness is without question the worst movie ever along with Chaos.
Stephanie s. gave it a7:
Michelle S, seriously? you obviously missed the point of the novel. if you even read the novel. the movie stayed true to the spirit of the book and i think anybody could appreciate that.
Adam L gave it a9:
I think this movie was solid all the way through. It didnt stray from looking at the lowest parts of humanity that appear in a crises. This is not a feel-good movie, as perhaps the red number people may have hoped. But I think it was well done. Its an art film . There are plenty of squeamish scenes and if you dont want to leave your comfort zone , don't watch this movie. Because it will make you think and perhaps yell at the screen !
Justin M gave it a9:
A very engaging movie that examines the ability of mankind to cope with disaster. Tough to watch at times but necessary to appreciate the end.
