Blindness the movie is in fair degree like the zombie survival story that became a cult favorite after Dawn of The Dead. It's based on a novel by Jose Saramago, a Portugese writer whose books reportedly feature long sentences without pauses and no indications of where conversations begin/end and who said what, and who (very likely in consequence) was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. Since it's highly unlikely I would want to trawl through that level of pretense, I'll keep my impressions restricted to this more accessible adaptation.

Blindness starts off with an affluent Japanese Man in his fancy car suddenly going blind...this is also a good place to tell you that none of the characters in this film have names. Japanese Man is driven to his affluent apartment by a smarmy Thief who then makes off with the car, driving jauntily along till he goes blind. Japanese Man and Wife go to a Doctor (Mark Rufallo) who is unable to pinpoint any cause of symptoms. Doctor goes home, makes desultory dinner conversation with his Wife about the case, goes to bed...and wakes up blind.

With these maneuvers we are told an unexplained blindness epidemic is spreading across the unnamed region/country where the characters exist. The government, like governments from zombie films, announces an immediate quarantine and bundles the blind into prison-like camps where they are divided into wards and given increasingly meager supplies of food and other amenities. The Doctor's Wife (Julianne Moore) is not blind but pretends to be so, to be with her husband; through most of the remaining narrative she is the only character that can see. While not revealing her ability, except at specific intervals to specific characters, she plays Florence Nightingale to the other members of their designated Ward 1 that include Japanese Man & Wife, Thief, Little Boy (cuteness inclusive), Whore (heart of gold inclusive), Old Black Man (played by the poor man's Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, patronizing voice inclusive).

Like Dawn of The Dead without its more fun bits, this part of the film focuses on the blind people learning to live in the constraints of their new surroundings. You also get not-so-subtle messages about the Doctor realizing how he was earlier blind to his wife's kindness and resourcefulness (that desultory dinner conversation in which he couldn't tell the difference between a tart and a tiramisu, the cad!), now completely dependent on her tireless goodwill and growing somewhat resentful of it. As more blind refugees pour in, conditions grow starker. Meirelles takes the opportunity to present an increasingly squalid picture – waste piling up, characters urinating on the walls, a simple wound on the Thief's leg left untreated, making him handicapped. There are inconsistencies like, despite references to lack of soap, some characters remaining clean-shaven, while others in the same ward get scruffy beards. Some scenes depicting the authorities' callousness are baffling: Firing into a crowd of refugees to restore a queue? D-uh. Saramago's book allegedly describes the spread of blindness among the guards of the shelter and how it makes them increasingly panicky, but we see nothing of that here.