Hot on the heels of the great Tropic Thunder/"retard" controversy come reports that groups for the unsighted are angry about the new movie Blindness, with the National Federation for the Blind planning protests when the film opens in theaters tomorrow. The movie, which was directed by Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian whiz kid responsible for City of God and The Constant Gardener, is a dystopian fantasy that depicts the effects of an epidemic that sweeps through a large city, rendering its inhabitants blind. It stars Julianne Moore as a woman who doesn't go blind but pretends that she has so that she can remain with her husband, played by Mark Ruffalo, when he and others who have been stricken are quarantined. The city is unnamed --the movie was shot principally in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with additional shooting in parts of Canada and Uruguay--and the characters have names like "The Doctor", "The Doctor's Wife", "The Thief", "The Accountant", and "Woman with Dark Glasses." Those capable of taking a hint might conclude that the film is intended as an allegory with symbolic characters, but when representatives of the NFB attended a preview, all they saw--or heard, and had described to them or something--was a major motion picture in which a bunch of people who instantly and mysteriously lose their sight insist on taking a glass-half-empty attitude about it.
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