Who’s In It: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, Yoshino Kimura, Danny Glover, Sandra Oh
The Basics: An unexplained epidemic of blindness sweeps over the human population. The “infected” are put into quarantined areas. Opthamologist Mark Ruffalo winds up in one, but his still-sighted wife, Julianne Moore, fakes sightlessness so she can be with him. The holding pens quickly turn concentration camp-like and wind up governed by power-mad despots like Gael Garcia Bernal who control the food supply and sexually terrorize others to get what they want. It’s the post-apocalypse again, but this time with more arty camera shots than maniac superviolence. That’s how you know it thinks it’s for smart people.
What’s the Deal: This movie wants to have it both ways. It wants to take you out of the world you know and drop you down on Planet Metaphor by allowing no characters to have names, no connection to history or scientific knowledge or social structures designed to keep lawlessness and chaos at bay. But then it also wants you to think the film is happening in your city, your country, to you, right now. So questions you’d normally have, like, “Well, who’s not blind besides Julianne Moore? Where are all the science people who could fix this? Where is this happening? What’s going on?” are considered irrelevant. Your job as an audience member is to absorb the heavy messages about humanity and not poke at it with your question-stick too much.
Who’s Good: Julianne Moore. Duh. When is she not good? Seriously, I recently saw an old Time/Life commercial for a series of dumb books about the paranormal. This commercial was made in like 1989, way before she was famous. And she’s acting up a storm, saying stuff like, “I felt a cold chill on my neck!” That was her one line. But it made me want to buy the books. So yeah, she’s tense and tender and strong and vulnerable and all the things you want Julianne Moore to be. Also there’s a really adorable dog. It’s no Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but it’s a cute dog and it sort of helps everyone learn to be nice again after being all animalistic in the concentration camp.
How It’s Like Sesame Street: Much like the old bits they used to do on that kid show about cooperation, this movie doesn’t allow anyone to get their sight back until they learn the value of working together and living in harmonious community and, yes, being good helpers.
What You’re Supposed to Think About While Watching It: Hurricane Katrina, political isolationism, fascism, the failure of governments to take care of their own people and, well, everything else that’s happened on the news in the past several years. But you get to eat popcorn and nachos while you do it, so it’s not a total bummer.