It was beyond bloody awful. I can't believe that "Blindness" the book has become "Blindness" the movie. The parts in the novel that are still most memorable to me, are the bits where the blind are pissing and shitting themselves because they have no one with sight who can look after them. The entire novel is about everybody in the world, all but one woman, going blind, reverting to an animal survivalist state, killing one another to stay on top or alive, and everybody just debased to such a low down degree, that you no longer give a goddamn about any of the characters after its all over.

It was beyond bloody awful. I can't believe that "Blindness" the book has become "Blindness" the movie. The parts in the novel that are still most memorable to me, are the bits where the blind are pissing and shitting themselves because they have no one with sight who can look after them. The entire novel is about everybody in the world, all but one woman, going blind, reverting to an animal survivalist state, killing one another to stay on top or alive, and everybody just debased to such a low down degree, that you no longer give a goddamn about any of the characters after its all over.

You should consider reading more than the first 50 pages.

'Children of Men'. Except everyone goes blind, instead of people not being able to make kids.

I predict you'll see many other variations of this over the next few years (people can't walk, people can't hear, everyone is aging superfast, etc).

I hereby copyright the above ideas, BTW. (so don't get any ideas, Hollywood producers).

I read the book a long time ago (it came out in 1995); Saramago won the Nobel prize in 1998. It's a great novel; yes, it's dark, but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading (just like Schindler's List is a film worth seeing).

I can't speak for the movie, and unless I see some really good reviews elsewhere, I'll probably just re-read the book.

Blindness is one of the best books I have read in a decade. I' can't imagine making it not a movie. I think I will pass. I love Jse Saramago's writing. However the book "Seeing" was not a great book.

That way you can get big honkin' settlement money when your lawyer drops plagarism nastygrams all over Hollywood!

You'll be richer than Cheney - and won't have to do a thing to earn it....

Unearned wealth being Cheney's primary source of income as well. (Underhanded, though, that's a different story).

Sorry, couldn't help it.

It's not all...unanimous. Life is funny like that. An avid reader myself, I plodded through the ENTIRE book, waiting for Jose's magic. But I write here bc, why the snarky and mean remark to another reader's dislike of the novel, inferring more or less, 'Well, if you didn't like it then obviously you never got past the 1st 50 pages..."

My conclusion, if you will allow another's besides one's own that is, is that the book and author have become somewhat of a cult phenom.

I was ANGRY that I'd wasted so much of my time. It was not a bad plot in and of itself; it was poorly written. I was unable to completely connect with any of the characters.

This is "The Day of the Triffids" minus the plants. I doubt the author of "Blindness" could come close to John Wyndham's achievement.

A junior writer at Maxim would be embarrassed.

Now, where's that kid with my latte?

There probably are busboys, valet parkers, night watchmen, etc. all over L.A. with scripts for those ideas in their dresser drawers.

Have to say, and it looks like I am in the minority here, I loved the book. After reading this review though, I'm not sure I want to sit through the movie.

I read Saramago's novel, Blindness, and it is a knock out read. Saramago is brilliant and won a Nobel in Literature. I wondered if Hollywood would take a hacksaw to the novel, and it seems it has.

But the problem isn't the novel. It's Hollywood, which is in part responding to a public including critics who are part of the same Zeitgeist which our current administration has managed to leave as one of the many aspects of its legacy--nothing too heavy politically, despite the country's continuing downward spiral, nothing too intellectual, because that's not entertaining, and nothing too non-American, because, we're in a war that's destroyed another country and gosh darn it, the Iraqis should take personal responsibility for themselves and quit whining, step up to the plate, so we can get the hell out and don't have to look too hard at ourselves.

This is unfortunately the cultural environment we're in and wow is it full of amazing contradictions.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I read "Blindness" in its entirety two years ago. It was not art. It was awful incarnate. "Blindness" as a work of imaginative fiction, can best be described as a bowel movement bound between a front and back cover.