Gabe, I usually love your columns here (I totally LMAO), but I think I don’t agree with you this time. First, I don’t understand why you take Blindness as a “Hollywood” production. Despite the presence of well known actors like Moore and Ruffalo, there were no big paychecks involved in the making of the film and no expectations of fantastic box office, not even here in Brazil, let alone in the rest of the planet. Blindness was a quite small production for Hollywood standards, with a budget of 20 or 25 millions. Some of those white background scenes were actually made with a glass of milk, and many of the scenes were filmed in Montevideo and São Paulo, which are not traditional cities in the process of making movies in Hollywood.
Second, Blindness is a fantastic book with a very clear political message. (anyone familiar with Saramago’s style knows that), but its plot is very difficult to recreate on film. Believe me, Meirelles did the best that was humanly possible with the money and material he had. And, as a brazilian and big fan of Saramago, who’s portuguese, for years, I think the story lost impact in english. It simply didn’t work. I understand they had to do it in english to get distribution and raise international interest in the story, but, the whole thing just sounded strange. And the script didn’t help.
And just to end the post, I think it’s unfair to insinuate that Saramago’s Nobel wasn’t deserving. I read nearly all his books and I think his work, in general, is brilliant and interesting. He has a thing for the unusual and he loves to create absurd scenarios to criticize our society…much better than Le Clezio, Muller and all these people winning Nobel Prizes lately…
Now, I’d like to kindly nominate Braveheart for this journey.