Blindness (film)
| Blindness | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Fernando Meirelles |
| Produced by |
Niv Fichman Andrea Barata Ribeiro Sonoko Sakai |
| Screenplay by | Don McKellar |
| Based on |
Blindness by José Saramago |
| Starring |
Julianne Moore Mark Ruffalo Gael García Bernal Danny Glover Yoshino Kimura Alice Braga |
| Narrated by | Danny Glover |
| Music by | Marco Antonio Guimarães |
| Cinematography | César Charlone |
| Edited by | Daniel Rezende |
| Distributed by |
Focus Features Miramax Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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121 minutes |
| Country | Canada Brazil Japan |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| Box office | $19.8 million |
Blindness is a 2008 Brazilian-Canadian film, an adaptation of the 1995 novel of the same name by Portuguese author José Saramago about a society suffering an epidemic of blindness. The film was written by Don McKellar and directed by Fernando Meirelles with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo as the main characters. Saramago originally refused to sell the rights for a film adaptation, but the producers were able to acquire it with the condition that the film would be set in an unnamed and unrecognizable city. Blindness premiered as the opening film at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2008, and the film was released in the United States on October 3, 2008.
A young Japanese professional is struck blind in his car at a crossing and is then approached by a few people, one offers to drive him home and steals his car. The blinded man describes his sudden affliction: an expanse of dazzling white. Upon arriving home and noticing her husband's blindness, the man's wife takes him to a local ophthalmologist who, after testing the man's eyes, can identify nothing wrong and recommends further evaluation at a hospital. Among the doctor's patients are an old man with a black eye-patch, a woman with dark glasses and a young boy. During a dinner with his wife, the doctor discusses the strange case. The woman with dark glasses, revealed to be a call-girl, becomes the third victim of the strange blindness after an appointment with a john in a hotel.
The next day, the doctor goes blind as well. Around the city, more citizens are struck blind, causing widespread panic, and the government organizes a quarantine for the blind in a derelict asylum. When a hazmat crew arrives to pick up the doctor, his wife climbs into the van, lying that she has gone blind in order to accompany him.
In the asylum, the doctor and his wife are first to arrive and both agree they will keep her sight a secret. Several others arrive: the woman with dark glasses, the Japanese man, the car thief, and the young boy. The wife comes across the old man with the eye-patch, who describes the condition of the world outside. The sudden blindness, known as the "white sickness", is now international, with hundreds of cases reported every day. The increasingly totalitarian government resorts to increasingly ruthless measures to try to staunch the epidemic, refusing the sick aid or medicines.
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Wikipedia