Cornwall Film Festival 2008

Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God), features an international cast, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover of the U.S.; Gael Garcia Bernal of Mexico; Sandra Oh of Canada; and Yusuke Iseya of Japan. The story was adapted for the screen from Nobel Laureate José Saramago's novel of the same name.

This bold new film is an epic exploration of human nature in the face of disaster. A man develops a mysterious and highly contagious illness which causes him to become blinded by a milky haze. Infecting all who come into contact with him, it rapidly becomes an epidemic, disabling the city by panic. The first infected victims are quarantined in an abandoned asylum and as they are preyed upon by other inmates and abused by the guards, life inside soon descends into uncivilized madness.

Meirelles's film is truly beautiful, even though the scenes are extreme. Whitewashed images provide a visual representation of the victims' experience and part of the tremendous success of Blindness is in its creation of a unique visual approach to telling this story. The powerful treatment of a population savaged by inhumanity forces us to question the workings of our own institutions, the boundaries of civilization and, ultimately, just how much we really let ourselves see.

This film has been given a guidance rating of 18