I picked up a rental DVD yesterday. Wasn’t looking for anything specific but found a gem, a masterpiece, entitled ‘Blindness’. Apparently the adaptation of a book by the Nobel prize-winning Jose Saramago.
The plot is simple. One by one, everyone in an unnamed city is mysteriously struck down by a highly infectious blindness. As soon as they go blind they are quarantined in what looks like an old mental hospital. There, the newly blind have to look after themselves, with guards literally shooting them if they try to leave.
There is one person, however, who is not actually blind. The opthamologist who first discovered the blindness (and promptly went blind himself) is joined by his wife (played by one of my favourite actors, Julianne Moore) who pretends to be blind so that she can look after them.
As more and more newly blind are deposited at the facility, the conditions deteriorate in a ‘Lord of the Flies’ kind of descent into barbarism, where the strong prey on the weak. The doctor’s wife (we never learn any of the characters’ names) slowly realises she must take responsibility for the small group in her ward and a community of diverse characters develops that must survive in this hostile environment.
The brilliance of the depiction of this descent into barbarism, is in the combination of realism and allegory. The deeper meaning of the allegory is never spelt out and the challenge to the viewer is to explore the layers of meaning.
The asylum is human society, where those who could once see are now struck with blindness. All are victims and in desperation and confusion react in different ways revealing the true nature of their characters. There is no-one who is all good or all bad, though some give in to the evil that is within them and make choices that they cannot take back. I cannot think of a better image of “hell on earth” than the one depicted in this movie, as the blind stumble down the faeces-smeared corridors of the asylum like zombies.
The only salvation is the small community that develops, with the doctor’s wife as reluctant leader. She can help the others with her sight, but she also has the burden of the being the only one who can see the full horror of what the blind are doing to each other. It made me think of being in ministry!
The group eventually manage to escape the asylum, only to find the entire city is now blind. They make their way to the doctor’s house and live together as a strange kind of family (the church!), until one of their group (the very first person to have been afflicted with the blindness) regains his sight. At that moment, the rest realise their sight will also return, and with that eschatological hope the film ends.
Sin, as depicted in this story, is therefore the relational and systemic result of spiritual blindness. Personal morality is a part of that, but the political and economic systems we, the blind, have created to survive in our victimhood, is what is really destroying us, not the blindness itself. And the answer is community, where those who have sight (vision) reluctantly lead and serve.
