Blindness

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Dawtrey, Adam (2008-04-29). " 'Blindness' to open Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-01. a b "The screen jury at the Cannes Film Festival, 2008". Screen International. Archived from the original on March 18, 2009 . Retrieved 2008-06-12. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. a b Renzetti, Elizabeth (2008-04-16). "Why the director of Blindness likes test screenings". The Globe and Mail. Toronto: CTVglobemedia . Retrieved 2016-06-30. Still a Communist party member, Saramago describes himself as a "hormonal communist - just as there's a hormone that makes my beard grow every day. I don't make excuses for what communist regimes have done - the church has done a lot of wrong things, burning people at the stake. But I have the right to keep my ideas. I've found nothing better." Yet he did write in 2003 that, after years of personal friendship with Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader "has lost my confidence, damaged my hopes, cheated my dreams". In Reis's view, "Saramago lives his communism mostly as a spiritual condition - philosophical and moral. He doesn't preach communism in his novels." His fable of consumerism and control in a globalised culture, The Cave (2001), shows the focus of life shifting from cathedral to shopping mall. But for Jull Costa, its strength is in his "writing so humanely about ordinary people and their predicaments".

Although I found this book interesting, I didn't find it the cutting edge work of genius that I had read about. I don't think I would ever read another Saramago because life is too short to struggle through such a difficult writing style. The book took me about three times as long as if it had been written in a more usual manner. It seems to me to be an ego thing to write in a way that is completely different to everyone else. The reason there is a standard way of writing is that it is easy for us all to understand rather than having to adapt to anyone's idiosyncratic idea of spelling and grammar. His fledgling José Saramago Foundation is poised to move into new premises. Speaking through a translator, he says the aim is to "bring a new dynamic to cultural life in Portugal". The foundation's director is Saramago's wife of 20 years, Pilar del Rio, a journalist who is now his Spanish translator. Saramago emphasizes that narratives can function as survival mechanisms and help people achieve freedom from oppression. In the hospital, the blind internees “pass the time” by telling stories, which allows them to reclaim their humanity and individuality in an environment where they otherwise seem homogeneous. Later, when the first blind man and the man’s wife visit their old apartment, they find a blind writer living there. This man goes on writing, even though he cannot read his own work, because this is how he preserves his “voice” and maintains his identity during the blindness crisis. While everybody else is desperately wandering the streets, focusing on little besides food and seeking meaning through religion and politics, the writer maintains his decency and composure inside, using narrative as a means of survival. We failed to put up resistance as we should have done when they first came making demands, Of course, we were afraid and fear isn't always a wise counsellor..." Fleming, Michael (2007-06-04). " 'Blindness' in Ruffalo's sight". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2007-06-18.

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I AM BLIND. This is the beginning of what my son labelled the scariest book he ever read, and yet such a perfectly brilliant masterpiece. Similar to Camus' La peste and Ionesco's Rhinocéros in more than one respect, it takes the reader to the darkest abyss of despair and filth and pain.

Blindness, it is, or is it really? We have been brought up with the notion of blindness in which a person loses its ability to see things as they are, more often than not it reveals out empathy and compassion from us. But could Blindness draw out baffling horror out of humanity, perhaps if it succeeds in showing the ignominy of humanity to itself; probably that’s what Jose Saramago has been able to achieve with this masterpiece. It just holds an inhuman mirror which shows humiliation of entire humanity, the farcicality of civilization to reveal our savage and primitive nature hidden under its inauthentic sheath of comfort, which is stripped down to rags of acrid and stifling truth, however appalling it may be. We invariably boast about feathers we have been able to add in the crown of humanity, over the years of civilization, but have we really moved a bit, transformed a bit from what we were, Jose Saramago shattered such notions, if any, with disdain; but perhaps that is how we really are, the ghastly image he shows us is probably we are essentially.

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From that point in the story, I was so focused on revenge, I became the goddamned Count of Monte Cristo. I couldn't be with my family at dinner without discussing the pitfalls of the white blindness, I couldn't stop pestering my buddy Pedro, who got me into this mess in the first place, and I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a week. After an uprising, folks find out the asylum has been abandoned by the army who was until then responsible for it and they’re able to leave. Realizing that what they went through in quarantine was only a detail in the huge landscape, now we follow our protagonists as they wander through the city in search of better conditions: water, food, clothes, a way to find their homes and their relatives. An outdoor performance adaptation by the Polish group Teatr KTO, was first presented in June 2010. It has since been performed at a number of venues, including the Old College Quad of the University of Edinburgh during the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. But without doubt it's a brilliantly told story, a fascinating study into human failings, if you allow for the vicarious witnessing of the horror of human degradation to be called fascinating. In-between Saramago manages to create comedy out of tragedy. This is not a new phenomenon in literature but Saramago's treatment has been so light and deadpan that you could deny he ever meant to be ironically humorous in its telling.

a b "Metacritic: 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 2, 2009 . Retrieved January 11, 2009. Meirelles originally envisioned doing the film in Portuguese similar to the novel's original language, but instead directed the film in English, saying, "If you do it in English you can sell it to the whole world and have a bigger audience." [12] Meirelles set the film in a contemporary large city, seemingly under a totalitarian government. Meirelles chose to make a contemporary film so audiences could relate to the characters. [17] The director also sought a different allegorical approach. He described the novel as "very allegorical, like a fantasy outside of space, outside the world", and he instead took a naturalistic direction in engaging audiences to make the film less "cold." [18] Writing [ edit ] Douglas Silva as an onlooker. Silva has previously acted in many Meirelles films, including the 2002 film City of God. Theme: Existence, Uncertainty, and Autonomy; Good, Evil, and Moral Conscience; Biological Needs and Human Society The film also contains visual cues, such as the 1568 painting The Parable of the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Allusions to other famous artworks are also made. Meirelles described the intent: "It's about image, the film, and vision, so I thought it makes sense to create, not a history of painting, because it's not, but having different ways of seeing things, from Rembrandt to these very contemporary artists. But it's a very subtle thing." [9] Release [ edit ] Theatrical run [ edit ]For anyone who has ever had the revelation at the end of the day that this world is full of too many cowards. . . I offer up to you: the doctor's wife. After an uprising, folks find out the asylum has been abandoned by the army who was until then responsible for it and they're able to leave. Realizing that what they went through in quarantine was only a detail in the huge landscape, now we follow our protagonists as they wander through the city in search of better conditions: water, food, clothes, a way to find their homes and their relatives. The inmates have been split into groups by rooms. After the valuables have been exhausted as a bartering tool for food and water the thugs tell the groups that if they want to eat they need to send their women to them. Hunger is all consuming. When you are hungry you can not think about anything else other than finding food. Your body, as part of our survival instinct, makes you very uncomfortable. We can all say what we would be capable of doing and not capable of doing when we are sitting in a bar casually munching on free peanuts and pretzels between pints of beer. The fact of the matter is most of us have never felt real hunger. We have had moments where our stomachs rumble or experienced a headache due to a missed meal, but true hunger, not eating for days hunger we can only speculate about what that is like.

The doctor's wife sees everything, and she is in the best and the worst position of all. She sees what needs to be done, but she must do it alone, and do it while the men sell-out her and every other woman in their ward (MEN OF WARD ONE—YOU SONS OF WHORES, I WILL NEVER, EVER FORGIVE YOU). As the devil himself paws at the doctor's wife with his cloven hooves, wanting to do great harm to her, he concludes, “This one is on the mature side, but could turn out to be quite a woman.” Tens of Thousands of Blind Americans Object to the Movie 'Blindness' ". American Council of the Blind. 2008-09-29. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07 . Retrieved 2008-10-01. A sequel titled Seeing was published in 2004. Blindness was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008.If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”