which is based on a novel that i’ve never read, and i have to say that with some minor misgivings here and there, i really liked it. i love films that are about the end of society—i used to say that i liked films that were about the end of the world, but that’s not really true, because that would mean that i was really into shit like sudden impact or armageddon or 2012 and i’m not at all into shit like that, in fact i hate shit like that because it’s stupid, like a giant ten ton weight smashing you in the head.
but i love movies where things break down and people break down and you see their true colors. like zombie movies. or virus movies. which this one is.
anyhow, it’s all about how the whole world gradually goes blind. instead of seeing black they see white, and everyone gets very fucked up very fast. the first man to go blind is ‘rescued’ by a thief who takes this opportunity to steal the keys to his apartment, but it doesn’t really matter because by the time he’s able to use them he’s blind too.
everyone gets rounded up and tossed into internment camps and julianne moore ends up in one of them with her husband, but she’s lying. she can see. she just doesn’t want to be separated from her husband. this pretty much amounts to being blessed with suck in the worst of ways, since she now ends up being the caretaker for a growing number of people. she sees the shit in the hallways, the soldiers shooting people who get out of line, the dead bodies.
there’s a sort of uprising and an asshole takes over the third ward. first he demands that everyone give up their valuables for food, and then he demands that since no one’s got any valuables any longer, the women need to allow themselves to be raped. they’re all starving by this point anyhow.
this was a point of some contention with a lot of people who thought that hey, julianne moore can see; she needs to fuck this bitch up proper and not let a bunch of women get raped. i think this viewpoint is sort of deliberately stupid and obtuse. first of all, she’s had to: watch her life disappear, watch her marriage disappear, watch how animalistic a lot of the people in the wards have become, watch how everything is literally falling to pieces.
it’s like blaming jews for not rising up and kicking nazi ass. it’s ridiculous.
anyhow, i won’t spoil too much more of this, and actually i haven’t really spoiled much, but i will say that i thought it was a good film, if a bit slow at times, that i liked the ending very much and found it fairly moving, and that people should remember that not all films are meant to be taken dead literally.
what i liked most about it is that it also sort of follows along with my own personal beliefs, which basically are as follows: when society falls apart, everything will go bad. most men will turn into fucking animals who will NOT do the right thing, and most people will become frightened and weak very, very quickly. i think about this kind of dynamic all the time, sometimes in a funny way, and sometimes in a fucked up way. but thematically, it’s one of my favorite things to write about.
which is, i assume, why i liked this so much.
