“Blindness” Is Outrageous And Offensive / Fernando Meirelles About His Movie
“Usually when I make a film, I can get started by going to Google, doing research,” Fernando Meirelles said about his new movie “Blindness,” opening October 3, 2008.
“But this is a film based on nothing. It’s all invented, a generic city with characters who have no names and no past, who get a disease that doesn’t exist. After I got involved in the film, I realized, wow, this is like a trap.”
“In most films everything is based on the eyes. You cut to show where the character is looking, that’s how you tell stories. It’s all about point of view, and I wasn’t going to do this film showing only Julianne’s character’s point of view. So how do you get people involved with the characters when you can’t put them in the same position visually?”
So, his solution, he said, was: “I put the audience in this blind world, to try to deconstruct the image, if I can say that. Sometimes the image is washed out, sometimes it’s out of focus, sometimes the framing is totally wrong, deliberately and toward the end of the film I even tried separating the sound from the image, showing a character with his mouth shut, but you’re hearing his voice.”
“It was all very experimental. Very scary. But “Blindness” is not scary in a horror-movie way, this isn’t science fiction, really. It’s a metaphor.”
His movie is “not a story like that, about a disease and somebody looking for a cure. The plague here is just an excuse to explore human behavior, how this blindness affected people, how they’d react if nobody could see them and they could do anything, knowing that they won’t be judged.”
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Blindness International Trailer
New international trailer for the upcoming “Blindness,” - apocalyptic nightmare adapted from the 1995 novel by Nobel laureate José Saramago and directed by Fernando Meirelles - has been released, showing some never-before-seen scenes from the movie.
Julianne Moore in "Blindness"
In an unnamed city of the near future, a terrifying epidemic of “white blindness” - the sufferers seeing only milky white light - spreads like wildfire. The infection’s ground zero is a Japanese businessman (Yusuke Iseya) who staggers sightlessly from his luxury automobile which is promptly stolen by an opportunist thief who also goes blind.
The man finds himself in the offices of an eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who is also treating a high-class prostitute (Alice Braga) in the business of servicing clients in a hotel, with the help of a discreet barman (Gael García Bernal). All go blind and from this nexus, the disease spreads.
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”Blindness” New Trailer and Character Posters
‘‘Blindness”, adapted from the 1995 novel by Nobel laureate José Saramago, is Fernando Meirelles‘ third film, after his heralded 2002 thriller “City of God” and 2005’s “The Constant Gardener“.”Blindness” movie, an apocalyptic nightmare, urban collapse, opened Cannes Film Festival 2008 and also was in Competition.
Although Saramago’s book was published more then 10 years ago, he declined to sell rights to the book for years. He resisted because it’s a violent book about social degradation and rape. Saramago didn’t want it given the typical Hollywood horror treatment.
Meirelles convinced Saramago only after his producer and screenwriter traveled to the Canary Islands and spent two days with the novelist discussing the potential of a new visual allegory about the fragility of civilization.
In an unnamed city of the near future, a terrifying epidemic of “white blindness”, the sufferers seeing only milky white light, spreads like wildfire.
As the shuffling inmates become used to their blindness, they experience a crisis, being and being perceived: they see no one and no one sees them. Do they exist? Did they exist before? Other inmates, however, see a new equality or democracy in blindness: young and old, ugly and beautiful, all are levelled.
And all the time Julianne Moore, exiled from the community of suffering, must endure a vision of horror from which everyone else is spared. She has characteristically strong performance as a lone figure who retains her eyesight, bearing sad but heroic witness to the horrors around her.
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Writer: Don McKellar
Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Alice Braga, Yusuke Iseya and Yoshino Kimura.
Release: September 19, 2008
watch the trailer after the jump
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‘Blindness’ Clip
‘Blindness,’ based on the bestselling 1998 novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer José Saramago is an allegory about the fragile state of civil society and the human spirit.
“Blindness” is narrated by Danny Glover, a late addition to the film, Fernando Meirelles said, because the director wanted to weave Saramago’s actual prose and reflections into the action, adapted from the novel to the screen by screenwriter Don McKellar.
Although Saramago’s book was published 10 years ago, it was not for lack of trying that the film adaptation took so long to wend its way to the screen.
By his own account, Saramago declined to sell rights to the book for years, turning away a host of suitors, including the Weinsteins, Whoopi Goldberg and actor García Bernal, who ended up co-starring in the film.
The author has said at various times that he resisted because it’s a violent book about social degradation and rape, and he didn’t want it given the typical Hollywood horror treatment. Read the rest of this entry
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New Trailer for ‘Blindness’
About a month ago we posted the teaser trailer for the upcoming Fernando Meirelles “Blindness”
As we previously report “Blindness” is Cannes Film Festival opener and also is in Competition line-up.
The film, about a city hit with a plague causing most of the population to go blind, was adapted by Don McKellar from the novel by Jose Saramago.
The cast is led by Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover and Gael Garcia Bernal.
“Blindness” opens on September 19
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