She didnt, it was just the natural way to end the book. It is an allegory about a group of people who survive under great stress, but frankly i would rather have seen them perish than sit through the final threequarters of the film. Portugals bestknown writerbut like many nobel winners hardly a household name in the uksaramoga has created a formidable and beautiful body of work deserving and receiving the very highest. The movie and the book, blindness, shows the theory of what would happen if people started going blind and if the illness was in fact contagious. Ya gotta know that a bunch o blind folk are going to have something to say about it. Movies like hysterical blindness if you like hysterical blindness you are looking for psychological, touching and serious movies about with friendship, working class, family relations, couple relations, love and romance, looking for love and single parent themes of drama genre shot in usa. I also feel like having seen the movie before i read the book, i had a firmer grasp on the narrative, as the film stayed pretty faithful. The character has the same name in both the book and the movie. The best thing about the movie version of blindness is how much it makes you appreciate the transcendent novel by jose saramago. Blindness dvd san antonio public library bibliocommons. Fernando meirelles, 2008, i would like you think about both the conclusion of the novel and also the film adaptation. An international bestseller this is a shattering work by a literary master. It is one of his most famous novels, along with the gospel according to jesus christ and baltasar and blimunda.
With 2008s adaption of jose saramagos famous novel, she was probably right. This book is a lively and fun approach to sports, and a very inclusive picture book showing disabled children and children without disabilities enjoying different sports together in a natural way. Boston globe a city is hit by an epidemic of white blindness which spares no one. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation, blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of our worst appetites and weaknessesand humanitys ultimately exhilarating spirit. Blindness is also, in many ways, a meditation on the many different kinds of blindness. Movies like blindness if you like blindness you are looking for bleak, suspenseful and serious movies about with plague, blind character, society, chaos, fight, doctor and human spirit themes of drama, mystery and scifi genre shot in brazil or canada. The only other book ive read by the author is, the gospel according to jesus christ so i really didnt know what to expect with blindness.
Find it in the us find it in the uk find it in braille. Watching this during a pandemic is something of a surreal experience. Another thing the film did that annoyed me quite a bit was how they left so many things unanswered. This is to say that it took their physical blindness to let them see their more pernicious forms of blindness. With julianne moore, mark ruffalo, gael garcia bernal, yusuke iseya. A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant white blindness. S ince its premiere at cannes this year, fernando meirelless film has been coldly received by many critics, on the grounds that it. The film was written by don mckellar and directed by fernando meirelles, with julianne moore and mark ruffalo as the main characters. When one man is struck blind while driving home from work, his whole world is turned to an eerie, milky haze. A city is ravaged by an epidemic of white blindness. The novel blindness, by jose saramago, was published in portuguese in 1995 and translated into english in 1997. Blindness is one of the most unpleasant, not to say unendurable, films ive ever seen.
Blindness the moviebunch of blind people will watch. Ive been reading a lot of serious fiction lately, and i think hhgg was exactly what my brain needed to. One by one, each person he encounters suffers the same unsettling fate. At least, thats my hope, idea, delusion, nightmaretobe. Blindness is a 2008 englishlanguage thriller film and an adaptation of the 1995 novel of the same name by portuguese author jose saramago about a society suffering an epidemic of blindness. Sent to a government asylum along with her nowblind husband mark ruffalo, she sees conditions deteriorate until civilization itself is in jeopardy, prompting her breakout of the asylum to lead a. In 1998, saramago received the nobel prize for literature, and blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing the award. If youve seen the movie, you remember sam and frodo, led by gollum, at the gates of mordor, unable to enter. Another thing, if you take the book as a parable, which given the fact that the author was a life long communist seems reasonable, then the blindness could be a result of cultural brainwashing, i. Much of the films cinematography, dialogue, and score felt like a directfromanime adaptation, as did. In this japanese chambara comedic drama film, we meet a young blind woman named ichi haruka ayase who is living in a home for goze blind women. Its like they just took out the pandemic movie handbook, changed the disease to blindness and played out every step like they were just reading out of the book.
Ichi is enigmatic and without a doubt the toughest character in the film. Saramago originally refused to sell the rights for a film adaptation. I also feel like it had greater success communicating what it felt like to be blind. This is a an important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horror of the century. Ended up reading blindness by jose saramago in a one go. I just finished the first book, but i remember thinking to myself about a quarter of the way through, this is like monty python, in text. City of god, the constant gardener adaptation does just that. The movie, blindness opened at the atlantic film festival last week. Inside the hospital is one eyewitness to the nightmare. Saramago originally refused to sell the rights for a. Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning essay on blindness is a novel by portuguese author jose saramago. Criminals and the physically powerful prey upon the weak, hoarding the meager food rations and committing horrific acts.
But blindness never feels like a lesson, thanks to saramagos mastery of plot, urbane narration complete with irreverent criticisms of its own digressiveness, and resourceful characterizations. Denatured, sometimes overexposed, sometimes too shadowy to see, it is an. Blindness reminded me a lot of the works of john wyndham especially his disturbing novel, the day of the triffids. This movie gets a lot of heat for its brutality but at the same time it shows the ugly truth of panic and anarchy of the masses. But blindness isnt like that, said the other fellow, they say that blindness is black, well i see everything white, that little woman was probably right, it could be a. When an epidemic of a disease known as the white sickness appears in her city, the wife julianne moore of a doctor is one of the few individuals left who still has sight. In 1998, saramago received the nobel prize for literature, and blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing. Blindness dystopian fable becomes an overwrought movie. Blindnessmovie the movie was very disturbing but i guess that is a good thing because we really get a feel of what it must be like being in the blind peoples position. A stunningly powerful novel of humanitys will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the nobel prize for literature. The epidemy is over and now she has to rebuild her life along with everybody else. The famous portuguese author jose saramago paints a cold and halting portrait of what it would be like were blindness suddenly contagious. Two aging single women in 1980s new jersey enact a depressing routine of deluded barroom romance in this madeforcable drama. Film and novel as we finish the novel and watch the film adaptation this week dir.
All the people are nameless the girl with the dark glasses, the boy with the squint, but we learn an enormous amount about them, and. Saramago was awarded the nobel prize for literature one year later, in 1998, in no. Blindness did the doctors wife actually go blind at the. Tolkein, in his book the two towers, illustrates strength in kindness in an amazingly eloquent passage within a scene that never made it onto the big screen. There were two shorthanded moves that both the movie and the book threw at readers, which are the doctors wife never losing her sight and the already blind man being taken into the blind ward. Based on the novel by nobel prizewinning novelist jose saramago, blindness takes place in an unspecified modern city, where a small group of people are afflicted with a disease that takes away their vision and fills their eyes with nothing but a vast, featureless whiteness like im swimming in milk, as one character puts it. Whats the difference between ensaio sobre a cegueira the book and blindness the movie. It seems clear that this is a judgment about the meaning of the novelthe whole novel is a parable of sorts, though not an allegory. That being said this is probably one of the most accurate book to movie adaptations i have ever seen. Its rare that a movie improves upon a piece of literature. Find out where blindness is streaming, if blindness is on netflix, and get news and updates, on decider. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal.
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