Amidst the congestion of traffic a man suddenly becomes blinded by a white light in his eyes. He is aided by a stranger who takes him home, but it is this very same man who steals the blind man's car. The thief (Don McKellar) quickly becomes infected with the blindness as well. A doctor (Mark Ruffalo), who is investigating the symptoms, finds that he has caught the disease too. His loving wife (Julian Moore) does not wish to leave him and fakes her own blindness leaving them to both be quarantined by the Government in a prison-like block. Within this compound are more and more of the infected and Moore takes it upon herself to help those suffering such as a blind man with an eye patch (Danny Glover) and a small boy. Within this new order though is an eventual power struggle as a bartender (Gael Garcia Bernal) starts calling the shots, declaring himself as the King of Ward Three.

I had not read the novel Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira by Jose Saramago before seeing Fernado Meirelles film adaptation, but it is questionable about how much of the novel had been left out, given the many gaping holes in this grubby and frustrating film. The Science Fiction genre has traditionally used the concept of the future to compensate for any lack of an explanation for their extraordinary plots. Children of Men, an excellent film, was instrumental in its immersive visual qualities that convinced us thoroughly of a future bureaucracy. Blindness does not have a particularly established time setting or a sense of place which leads us to inevitably question what is going on and why this epidemic is occurring. It is established like this deliberately, but even at its conclusion it never answers any of its own questions. The point of the film is meant to be that even without vision it is still clear how inhumane people can become. This is an interesting, albeit unoriginal concept, but there are just too many contrivances and holes in the story that make this a movie, rather than something entirely plausible. Where did the bartender obtain his gun from? Why didn't the soldiers guarding the prison stop the hysteria? How were the baddies in Ward 3 able to distribute the boxes of rations? How is a blind Mark Ruffalo able to walk around the city collecting clothes? No matter how stylish the direction remains it is difficult to overlook these glaring issues in the script.

The film is a largely passive and often unemotional experience because of the flatly drawn nature of the characters. Bar Danny Glover, there is a wealth of talented and exciting actors here, but the film too neatly divides its characters into good and bad, with little explanation for their motivations. How or why Bernal went from a bartender to a gun wielding tyrant is never explained. His part, while pivotal to the middle of the film, still feels reduced and Danny Glover must have been filling in for a busy Morgan Freeman - he has a pretty thankless role. It would be futile to question Moore's abilities as an actress - she's strong here - but I never felt her frustration and stress to the point where she went from a caring wife to someone violent. Little is known about her character - she isn't even given a name - thus perhaps more time should have been spent towards her as the protagonist, providing some back-story.

The communal elements of the film are interesting but they are not particularly new ideas, no matter how daring the film would like to be. There is a sickening scene amongst the factions of the wards, where after running out of money Bernal's character suggests that his adversaries can pay for their food by offering their women to his group for sex. For the sake of the script the women comply. While this scene is almost darkened, almost to the point of invisibility, the crumbling of the women will likely offend someone and it is this nastiness in conjunction with ugly and muddy surreal visuals that will divide audiences about the film. The point of the film should not be to shock, rather it is about the primitive behaviour and the inhumanity that awakens within ordinary people when we mistaken tyranny for order. It never reaches any great heights and it is never as intense or as exciting as it should be, but it is probably one of the more interesting misfires that will be released this year.