Blindness (2008)

“This story does not have one truth, and all the different interpretations make sense…This is a story that must create a lot of questions, but give no answers… It raises issues about man’s evolution, makes us reflect critically, but points in no specific direction…”

– Director Fernando Meirelles as quoted
in the Miramax Films Press Release for Blindness

I begin with this quote in particular, not just because it sort of underscores the pretentious nature of the film, but more importantly because, I’m all for films that challenge the viewer in putting the pieces together, testing our intellect by making us come up with meaning whether it’s discovering a political allegorical subtext in No Country for Old Men or trying to figure out just what the hell is going on in Memento.

And while admittedly despite my high tolerance for art house fare that doesn’t offer an easy way out for the viewer, when we’re presented with something like the cinematic adaptation of Nobel prize-winning author Jose Saramango’s 1998 novel Blindness and adapted by Tony award-winner Don McKellar, we at least want the reassurance that the filmmaking team knows precisely the film they want to make. For--if it had been handled with far more clarity—no doubt the film would’ve resonated better with the audience. We get the sense that there’s a larger purpose to the epic scope of the storytelling, which surrounds a nightmarish outbreak that suddenly inflicts mankind when ordinary citizens begin losing their ability to see (view the trailer).

Beginning with an Asian motorist, soon the bizarre loss of sight (which at first we assume is some sort of nerve induced hysterical blindness) becomes something far more horrifying altogether. And soon-- with the pacing of an action film—more people are infected as they come in contact with the initial man until eventually Sandra Oh’s World Health Initiative quarantines them all into a militaristic compound where they’re left to fend for themselves in a situation that evolves into something resembling at first a prison and then eventually a concentration camp.

While I’m unfamiliar with Saramango’s source material, I understand that it did keep one major storytelling device in serving up a cast of nameless characters known only by a mere description whether it’s Alice Braga’s The Woman with the Dark Glasses or Danny Glover’s The Man With the Black Eye Patch.

The film’s protagonists consist of talented actors Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore as The Doctor and His Wife, respectively. While Ruffalo’s eye doctor loses his sight after trying to treat the first sufferer of what has been since dubbed the “White Sickness,” his devoted wife fakes the same condition in order to journey to the compound and take care of her husband.

Although initially Moore seems to be just playing the supportive and loving sidekick to Ruffalo’s heroic character who becomes the unceremonious "Ward Representative" of their first ward, intriguingly it’s Moore who becomes the true hero of the film. As the leader with sight, she fearlessly takes on Gael Garcia Bernal’s monstrous King of Ward Three—although much too late in this critic’s opinion—as the increasingly dangerous King begins holding the compound’s governmental resources for ransom in the form of money, jewelry, and eventually women.

It’s at about this time that the film seems to truly begin relishing in the utter degradation, depravity, and filth of the situation. Of course, heightened circumstances can bring out the best and worst in people when they are tested but the point could’ve been made in much less than 125 grueling minutes as we begin feeling utterly sickened by seemingly endless frames consisting of naked, dirty starving individuals, urine and fecal matter, a horrific group rape scene that outdoes Kubrick’s infamously brutal “Singin’ in the Rain” routine from A Clockwork Orange and more.

And that is not to say that illustrating a dystopia on film doesn’t have value as Alfonso Cuaron’s brilliant Children of Men did this much better and even the less-than-stellar gore fests of 28 Days Later, I Am Legend and Stephen King’s The Mist raised far more questions about the dangers of scientific experimentation, group think, and discovering our true nature at the worst of times. Yet, structurally, something is awfully amiss in Blindness. And honestly, it’s an extremely disappointingly exploitative, utterly ugly film that instantly made me want to watch Meirelles’ first groundbreaking effort, City of God (one of the greatest films of the 00’s) and its Oscar winning follow-up The Constant Gardener just to remember the talent he possesses, not to mention do more research on the original book.

For, as we the press exited into the lobby from the darkness of the film which just sort of stops after a surprisingly important yet far too briefly explored plot point, we’re left wondering just what it all means and if Meirelles actually knew in the first place the type of film he wanted to make. My theory is that he was so fascinated by the idea and the topics therein that he neglected to fine-tune it into a workable thesis statement, thereby closing audience’s minds instead of opening them for discussion.

Although one critic joked that if he was forced to watch it again, he would kill himself and another said it was one of the worst films he’d ever seen, I wouldn’t go that far, yet it’s one of the biggest letdowns of 2008. In fact, trouble was predicted following its premiere as the Opening Night Selection at the Cannes Film Festival which left critics divided and Blindness was sent back for reworking (Entertainment Weekly, pg. 55; 8/22/08).

Yet despite the changes, we’re left not just thoroughly confused but realize at last that we really don’t care. And while I was charged with the argument that if it remains in your head hours later, it was a good film, I disagree. For it remained there precisely because it wasn’t a good film as my head was filled with the grotesque imagery of fecal matter and sexual assaults, and wondering why the celluloid was wasted in the first place.

Although my guess is that it will most likely be viewed as a religious parable, an indictment on governmental ineffectiveness in the wake of a tragedy, a commentary on the darkness of human nature, an allegory that illustrates the terror of Nazi like group think, or a warning about where we are headed. Yet, ultimately asking us to sit through something as endlessly bleak, overwhelmingly brutal as Blindness where in the end the questions it raised and the filmmaker’s intention are greater than the sum of its horrible parts, makes Meirelles’ opening quoted goal seem pointless, shallow, and a bit sadistic in the end.

Not By Chance

Produced by Constant Gardner director Fernando Meirelles, this impressively audacious and high quality debut feature film from Brazilian writer/director Philippe Barcinski follows in the thematic and cinematically stylistic footsteps of Altman’s Short Cuts, Iñárritu’s Amores Perros and 21 Grams, and Haggis’ Crash.

Centering on the alternately tragic and romantic yet always unpredictable fates of its seemingly unrelated characters, we first meet Enio, a middle-aged Sao Paulo traffic controller whose orderly existence, driven by mathematical logic and scientific precision is thrown into a tailspin after he discovers there are things beyond his control. After a startling event shakes Enio to his core, we encounter the younger talented billiard player Pedro, who, similar to Enio has a passion for structure in the geometric design of his pool table designs, and later discover that he is also linked to the film’s earlier climactic event.

Polished, breathtaking and expertly photographed with a memorable score woven throughout, Not By Chance is one of those films that will not only get audiences talking about the existential matters of free will vs. destiny but will also benefit from a second viewing.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

Director:
Cao Hamburger

With such masterworks as De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, Doillon’s Ponette, and Majidi’s Children of Heaven, it’s become a favorite practice for foreign filmmakers to tackle stories of tremendous depth and scope from the eyes of an innocent child struggling to make sense of a changing world, political climate, economic strife and/or a threatened family dynamic. And indeed these are the types of films that manage to engage audiences regardless of age and gender who all instinctively side with our precocious hero, wanting to protect them from harm, comfort them if they’re scared and love them when they’re lonely. Instead of tales of talking animals voiced by Eddie Murphy or sarcastic brats who always manage to hit annoying adults in the crotch, consistently we find solace in these stories of heartache and compassion from around the globe. However, the frequent success and release is a double-edged sword as the works have become not just highly marketable but so expected among foreign film fans that unless the filmmakers try desperately to set themselves outside the pack of the aforementioned works in the vein of movies such as Salles’s Central Station, Dupeyron’s Monsieur Ibrahim, or Malberti’s Viva Cuba, they’re nearly guaranteed to get overlooked, lost in the shuffle of too little advertisement for foreign titles, until they’re interchangeably shelved at a local library or video store, saved only when a film fan just happens by in the mood to take a chance on an unknown offering.

While unfortunately saddled with a forgettable title and misleading trailer that seems to set it up as though it were Monsieur Ibrahim 2 or Central Station: The Return (which makes me fear for its eventual life collecting dust at Blockbuster), director Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is anything but forgettable. Understated, brilliant, heartrending yet surprisingly filled with warmth and charm, Year, which was chosen as the official selection by Brazil for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 2008 Academy Awards after earning accolades from around the globe, was co-produced by City of God director Fernando Meirelles. Despite the fact that Hamburger as well as some of the cast and crew including the talented cinematographer Adriano Goldman (City of Men) have collaborated with Meirelles either on God or Men’s television and film incarnations, Hamburger’s family friendly yet welcomingly deep coming-of-age story has none of the overwhelming violence nor sense of inescapable despair of Meirelles’s masterpiece God. Yet, as in God, we’re transfixed by the plight of a young man trying to navigate through the tumultuous 1970’s in Brazil.

Set in 1970 just after the legendary soccer (or “football”) player Pele scored his 1,000th goal positioning the country to claim the World Cup, Year finds preteen Mauro (Michel Joelsas) more concerned with collecting the likenesses of his favorite players to complete his card collection and mastering the art of table soccer, than paying much attention to the effects the cold war is having on the totalitarian regime running his native Brazil. Shortly after the film begins, we find ourselves as confused as Mauro when his devoted parents Bia (Simone Spoladore) and Daniel (Eduardo Moreira), hurriedly pack up their son in their old blue VW, flee the city of Belo Horizante to head for Sao Paulo in order to leave him with his estranged paternal grandfather who resides in the tight knit Jewish suburb of Bom Retiro. Informing young Mauro that they have no choice but to go on “vacation” as we deduce that his left-leaning parents are political activists trying to outrun governmental persecution, he’s promised that they will return before the first game of the World Cup. However, after a series of unfortunate events find Mauro unable to stay with his relative, he’s left mostly to fend for himself while becoming the unofficial mascot of the community, forming an awkward alliance with his grandfather’s neighbor, the predominately Yiddish speaking, devout Shlomo (Germano Haiut) and befriending young Hanna (a terrific Daniela Piepszyk) an adorable tomboy who lives in the same building. Preoccupying himself with table soccer and obsessing about the World Cup, the lonely Mauro who’s so devoted to his parents that he remains in arm’s length of the phone for extended periods until he’s lured outside by Hanna, begins to come out of his shell, although at the same time, realizes that in the wake of political turmoil, the term “vacation” may mean something much different than he’d imagined.

Although one can make the case that there’s nothing overly innovative about using sports as a metaphor to unite a community as Pele’s heroics manage to inspire everyone in Bom Retiro, Cao Hamburger never lets the film’s subtext get lost in what could have been a contrived loss-of-innocence paradigm. And not content to solely utilize Mauro's limited, naïve look at Brazil’s political situation, Hamburger expertly explores the boy's associations with a memorable cast of characters and takes a character vignette approach that’s echoed by numerous cinematographic touches with an emphasis on a “rack focus” as the camera racks to show the reaction of any number of individuals in a scene. It's by weaving a genuine tapestry of diverse perspectives that we’re painted a much more intricate portrait of the goings-on, feeling genuinely touched, heartbroken, and enlightened by the therefore well-earned conclusions Hamburger makes as the film rolls along towards its conclusion.

One of the best films released so far in 2008, Year is much richer than one would’ve assume given the bland tone of the trailer. Featuring a phenomenally deft portrayal by its young lead who was chosen in an exhaustive six month search from one thousand auditions (IMDb) and a strong supporting cast including the underused Liliana Castro and Caio Blat as two adults who befriend young Mauro, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, is one in a long line of quality foreign films depicting a country’s evolution from the eyes of a child. In addition it's hopefully one that--given enough positive word of mouth-- won’t land helplessly forgotten amidst a pile of “unknown” limited releases all pushed aside to make room for the latest celebrity driven blockbuster filled with gross-out gags and toilet humor pandering to the lowest common denominator for family entertainment. So pack a suitcase for the trip-- The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is a true gem and well worth the trouble of tracking down.

City of Men

Director: Paulo Morelli

It’s said that the sins of the father eventually go to his son but it’s a trickier proposition when a person either doesn’t know who his own father is or has vague memories of a father who was killed when he was young and now must face his own identity as a father to his baby boy. In director Paulo Morelli’s cinematic follow-up to Fernando Meirelles’s masterpiece City of God, the two main characters find themselves in exactly these situations as they turn eighteen. After losing his son at a young age, Ace (Douglas Silva) realizes he must try and make amends to ensure that his son Clayton doesn’t grow up to repeat his mistakes coming-of-age without male guidance but barely able to take care of himself or his equally young wife, Ace struggles with responsibility and priority when he’s enlisted by his best friend Wallace (Darlan Cunha) to track down the father he’s never met in order to secure his identity and get a needed signature on his eighteen year old identification card.

Like City of God, City of Men, which is based on the critically acclaimed Brazilian television series recently released in the states on both DVD and through the Sundance Channel, is set in the low class slums of Rio de Janeiro although while God was set in the past, Men’s action takes place today as the children of their community hill align themselves with a local gang leader and are willing to take up arms and risk their lives to fight local gangs over territory. Although one doesn’t necessarily have to see City of God in order to appreciate its far more linear follow-up with an emphasis on sentimentality and a cleaner narrative than its flashier, edgier, father God, it’s fascinating to view it with the first grand scale work fresh in one's mind.

Although Men feels like an ideal companion piece to the first film, however despite some similarities in style and crew behind and in front of the camera, Men is a more audience friendly picture that will be able to attract those who may have run for the exits from the brutality and horror of the first film. Although, Men comes with a few contrivances and one predictable twist near the end, which reminded me that it was missing the impact of the first picture which, in its much louder way offered up a truer sense of the beating heart of Rio and one less carefully and deliberately presented to filmgoers as this more accessible work. However, this being said, it’s a great, great film in its own right and one that feels, similar to God years earlier, like the perfect antidote to the mindless and numb Hollywood manufactured orgies of violence and gore by never letting us forget that we’re not looking at just bored teens who turn to violence to titillate or shock, but teens who grew up with absolutely nothing and must find a way to fight to survive, to make tough choices and more importantly, discover how to take the lessons or lack thereof they learned from their fathers and apply them to the next generation.