Blindness (Vintage classics)

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Portugal declared two days of mourning. [7] [8] There were tributes from senior international politicians: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Bernard Kouchner (France) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain), while Cuba's Raúl and Fidel Castro sent flowers. [7] Saramago wrote a sequel to Blindness in 2004, titled Seeing ( Ensaio sobre a lucidez, literal English translation Essay on lucidity), which has also been translated into English. The sequel novel takes place in the same country featured in Blindness and features several of the same nameless characters. Langer, Adam (November–December 2002). "José Saramago: Prophet of Doom – Pessimism is our only hope. The gospel according to José Saramago". Book Magazine. Archived from the original on 31 October 2002 . Retrieved 20 June 2010. The film also contains visual cues, such as the 1568 painting The Parable of the Blind by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Allusions to other famous artworks are also made. Meirelles described the intent: "It's about image, the film, and vision, so I thought it makes sense to create, not a history of painting, because it's not, but having different ways of seeing things, from Rembrandt to these very contemporary artists. But it's a very subtle thing." [9] Release [ edit ] Theatrical run [ edit ]

Very evidently Saramago's novels are not simple parables. It would be rash to "explain" what all the people (but one) in the first book were blind to, or what it is that the citizens of Seeing see. What's clear is that they're the same people, it's the same city, a few years later: one book illuminates the other in ways I can only begin to glimpse. Eberstadt, Fernanda (2007-08-26). "The Unexpected Fantasist". The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Company. Alice Braga as woman with dark glasses. [8] Braga described her character as mysterious, believing, "While she does sleep with men because it is easy money, I did not want to treat her purely as a prostitute. She starts out quite tough, but she develops very strong maternal feelings." Meirelles explained that the character's glasses and cascading hair gave her a cold appearance, but through her scenes with the orphaned Boy with the Squint, she develops warmth. [8] Bloom, Harold (15 December 2010). "Fond Farewells". TIME. Archived from the original on 19 December 2010 . Retrieved 15 December 2010.

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Thompson, Anne (2008-05-20). "Buyers proceed with caution at Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-20.

An English-language film adaptation of Blindness was directed by Fernando Meirelles. Filming began in July 2007 and stars Mark Ruffalo as the doctor and Julianne Moore as the doctor's wife. The film opened the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. [3] Howell, Peter (2008-05-16). "Blindness not getting glad eye". Toronto Star. Torstar . Retrieved 2008-05-20. a b Eberstadt, Fernanda (18 June 2010). "José Saramago, Nobel Prize-Winning Writer, Dies". The New York Times . Retrieved 18 June 2010.

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Goldstein, Gregg (2007-09-09). "Miramax nabs U.S. rights to Meirelles' 'Blindess' ". The Hollywood Reporter. The Nielsen Company. Archived from the original on 2007-09-14 . Retrieved 2008-03-11. The Swedish Academy selected Saramago as the 1998 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The announcement came when he was about to fly out of Germany after the Frankfurt Book Fair, and caught both him and his editor by surprise. [9] The Nobel committee praised his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony", and his "modern skepticism" about official truths. [13] Decorations [ edit ] Dawtrey, Adam (2008-04-29). " 'Blindness' to open Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-01. a b c d "President defends Jose Saramago funeral no-show". BBC News. 21 June 2010 . Retrieved 21 June 2010. In 1998 Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the prize motivation: "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." [21]

An outdoor performance adaptation by the Polish group Teatr KTO, was first presented in June 2010. It has since been performed at a number of venues, including the Old College Quad of the University of Edinburgh during the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Paradoxically, though, the more universal his literary work and thinking became, the more Saramago rooted himself in his Portuguese, and originally rural, identity. Like Jorge de Sena before him, he went into exile, but he also became one of the greatest modern Portuguese humanists and universalists, and a modernizer of the Portuguese and Iberian cultures. His proposed idea of transibericity invites us to think all Iberian cultures together, both before and after the Portuguese and Spanish colonizations, avoiding all hierarchies or impositions. The task, he once said, is of “translating, while respecting the place from which [we] came and the place to which [we] are going.” Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter described Blindness as "provocative but predictable cinema", startling but failing to surprise. Honeycutt criticized the film's two viewpoints: Julianne Moore's character, the only one who can see, is slow to act against atrocities, and the behavior of Danny Glover's character comes off as "slightly pompous". Honeycutt explained, "This philosophical coolness is what most undermines the emotional response to Meirelles' film. His fictional calculations are all so precise and a tone of deadly seriousness swamps the grim action." [38] Justin Chang of Variety described the film: " Blindness emerges onscreen both overdressed and undermotivated, scrupulously hitting the novel's beats yet barely approximating, so to speak, its vision." Chang thought that Julianne Moore gave a strong performance but did not feel that the film captured the impact of Saramago's novel. [39] Roger Ebert called Blindness "one of the most unpleasant, not to say unendurable, films I've ever seen." [40] A. O. Scott of The New York Times stated that, although it "is not a great film, ... it is, nonetheless, full of examples of what good filmmaking looks like." [41] a b c Evans, Julian (28 December 2002). "The militant magician". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2002.Fall Movie Summer Preview, September: Blindness." Entertainment Weekly, Iss. #1007/1008, August 22/29, 2008, pg.55. When we think of someone, when we hear their name, we always conjure an image in our head; a picture is formed before our eyes. Here we are with a bunch of people who no longer can rely on their sight so, in not giving them names, Saramago also puts us in the dark, forcing us to rely instead on personal characteristics and descriptions given to conjure these characters ourselves. “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”