The Rotten Tomatoes Web site, which collects movie critics and regular people reviews, reports that 12 of the 16 movie critics' reviews had little good to say about the movie "Blindness," which opened nationwide Oct. 3.My favorite blistering sentiment came from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times: "It is an allegory about a group of people who survive under great stress, but frankly I would rather have seen them perish than sit through the final three-quarters of the film."
Interestingly, the Rotten Tomato community of reviewers liked the film much more, with 42 of the 50 reviewers rating it positively.
One "regular guy" reviewer said he didn't feel the film was offensive to blind people. "Blindness is a very unique, almost apocalyptic, kind of movie that keeps you glued to the screen. It runs the gambit from touching to disturbing to outright graphic in scenes all of which you would expect with the scenario that the movie puts forth. I really enjoyed how real the movie seemed and that the director didn't seem to back down and edit out the many scenes that most people would object too. . . . .The vile, immoral depiction of groups of people in this movie are very accurate for the situation and do not represent blind people in general. You have people who have lost their way of life. People who were so dependent on sight and are now frustrated at having to learn to live without it. A lot of people are made miserable by this fact and turn that on others. There is just so much more here than the epidemic of blindness. . . .This movie is just a very real depiction of a possible, albeit horrific, version of a chaotic scenario. Had the epidemic not been so quick, all of these people could have gotten help to learn how to live without their sight. They could have gotten over the initial depression and shock of it happening and adjusted to their new life and fit right in as they did before. There would have been no mass hysteria and chaos. Then again, there would have been no movie in that case. Don't boycott this film on behalf of the blind. It is in no way meant to shine a negative light on them or say that this is how they are. Blind people are just like anyone else; they just happen to not be able to see."
The New Republic reviewer said: "Blindness is a glum, ugly film, and pretentious in the bargain. But, perhaps least excusable, it is a fundamentally ill-conceived film, the visual depiction of a world without sight. It is further evidence, I fear, that a gifted filmmaker is losing his own vision."
Finally, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is hosting an online video about why the NFB is protesting the film. In the 20th episode of "Straight Talk," NFB PR specialist Chris Danielsen explains in the video that in the movie "the portrayal of blind people is really outrageous. Their level of incompetence is just not credible. They are constantly disoriented. The blind people who aren't helpless are awful, awful criminals. The impression that one would get from this movie is that blind people are either completely helpless or that we're actually evil."
