Tag: Jose Saramago
“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.”
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.
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.
”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
‘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.
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.
