As bad as this pandemic has been, and as many lives as COVID has taken, the situation could have been much more dire.
That was the point driven home in "Blindness".
How did I come upon this film from 2008?
Rather by accident, truthfully.
I'd gone to "Moonfall" at the cinema and found it to be a throwback to the disaster flicks of the 1970's; I don't know if that was the film's goal, but that's how I perceived it.
It left me wanting something more... but staying at the AMC for the next batch of movies would have left me hanging for almost an hour.
So, I'd come home, to peruse the listings on HBO, in hopes of something free.
This one has Mark Ruffalo, so I held up and ran the projector, so to speak.
Good choice.
Based on the book that garnered the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature for its Portuguese author, Jose Saramago, it's a look at life in a pandemic.
Here's how it differs from the one we've been in for two years: the virus doesn't kill the people infected with it... it makes them blind.
Specifically, they become snowblind, only seeing bright whiteness with their open eyes.
There's no way to avoid it, as it is not spread by touch or cough or sneeze; just being in the presence of someone infected pretty well guarantees blindness within a day's time.
How scary is that?
At least the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus doesn't affect our sight, leaving us free to binge-watch on television, or surf the ether web's currents, or take a drive to get out of the house.
Yes, just think about that: to not even be able to drive because the eyes are useless.
Very scary thought.
The movie, like the book, began innocently enough, with anonymous people living their busy lives in some large, unnamed city, in some unnamed country.
Suddenly, there's a traffic jam, caused by a car that has stopped without warning.
When three onlookers and a police officer approach the driver, he tells them he has gone blind and cannot see to drive.
One onlooker offers to help, to drive the now-blind driver to his home, and the man gratefully allows him to do so.
The onlooker gets the blind man into his apartment, then becomes a thief, taking off with the blind man's keys still in his possession, as well as the blind man's car.
When the blind man's wife comes home, she decides to take him to an eye doctor.
That's when they discover the theft of their car, so they get a taxi.
When they arrive at the optometrist's office, they interact with the receptionist, as well as the patients in the waiting room: a woman with her little boy; a call girl in dark sunglasses; and an aging man with an eye patch.
The doctor sees the blind man right away, but cannot find a problem with his eyes; he tells the blind man more intense study will need to occur at the hospital.
So the doctor sends the couple away.
When the doctor goes home that night, he discusses the mysterious case with his wife as she prepares dinner.
Meanwhile, the thief has sold the vehicle and gone to a bar and had a few drinks, interacting with the barkeep and patrons.
So, the driver (Patient, Ground Zero) has directly interacted with eleven people; all are blind the next day, just like him.
That's when they discover the theft of their car, so they get a taxi.
When they arrive at the optometrist's office, they interact with the receptionist, as well as the patients in the waiting room: a woman with her little boy; a call girl in dark sunglasses; and an aging man with an eye patch.
The doctor sees the blind man right away, but cannot find a problem with his eyes; he tells the blind man more intense study will need to occur at the hospital.
So the doctor sends the couple away.
When the doctor goes home that night, he discusses the mysterious case with his wife as she prepares dinner.
Meanwhile, the thief has sold the vehicle and gone to a bar and had a few drinks, interacting with the barkeep and patrons.
So, the driver (Patient, Ground Zero) has directly interacted with eleven people; all are blind the next day, just like him.
When the doctor wakes up and is blind, he and his wife - who has some innate immunity and is the only person to not go blind - go to the hospital, where the doctor is whisked away to a quarantine facility, with his wife going with him by claiming she was also blind...
even though she is not.
In fact, she never, ever becomes blind.
That allows her to help organize the shelter when others start arriving... including the thief, the receptionist, and all the doctor's patients who had been in the waiting room when the blind man came in.
Even the blind man's wife, the bartender, and many others arrive, with all forced by armed guards to stay in the confines of the building and its fenced yard.
At first, folks are willing to do as the she and the doctor say and stay calm.
That changes when one miscreant manages to convince others on his ward to take advantage of the lack of food to set up a barter system, first for jewelry, then for sex with the women of the other wards.
(As I was looking at the shambles that the shelter had become, one thing came to mind: the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.
It had been meant to serve as a temporary home for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but a few bad selfish bullies took over, brutalizing the non-gang people trapped there.
Wow.)
So, back to the movie... while the bad men were running amok at the quarantine building, civilization outside the structure had gone straight to hell.
Anyone in a town was trapped there; anyone in the country was trapped as well, as all were blind and could not drive to anywhere else.
even though she is not.
In fact, she never, ever becomes blind.
That allows her to help organize the shelter when others start arriving... including the thief, the receptionist, and all the doctor's patients who had been in the waiting room when the blind man came in.
Even the blind man's wife, the bartender, and many others arrive, with all forced by armed guards to stay in the confines of the building and its fenced yard.
At first, folks are willing to do as the she and the doctor say and stay calm.
That changes when one miscreant manages to convince others on his ward to take advantage of the lack of food to set up a barter system, first for jewelry, then for sex with the women of the other wards.
(As I was looking at the shambles that the shelter had become, one thing came to mind: the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.
It had been meant to serve as a temporary home for those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, but a few bad selfish bullies took over, brutalizing the non-gang people trapped there.
Wow.)
So, back to the movie... while the bad men were running amok at the quarantine building, civilization outside the structure had gone straight to hell.
Anyone in a town was trapped there; anyone in the country was trapped as well, as all were blind and could not drive to anywhere else.
All were as desperate for food and for clean water as those in quarantine.
No electricity, no lights at night - neither were of use anyway, as everyone was blind.
That's what those in the quarantine building found after a fire drove them outside...
where they discovered the guards had deserted their posts at some point.
The band of people who had spent so much time with the doctor and his wife were led to the doctor's house, to try to decide what next to do.... but first, showers, clean clothes, a meal lifted from a store's cellar, and a good night's sleep.
The next morning, the doctor's wife is making coffee and breakfast...
and the blind man's sight suddenly returns.
Glory, glory!
The others trust that their vision will also return!
They will all be able to return to their lives!
Only the older man with the eye patch and the woman who had been a call girl show some sadness about the news.
They had been treated to life as part of a group that cared for each other and had looked toward becoming a couple...
now, would they?
Could they?
Wow.
No electricity, no lights at night - neither were of use anyway, as everyone was blind.
That's what those in the quarantine building found after a fire drove them outside...
where they discovered the guards had deserted their posts at some point.
The band of people who had spent so much time with the doctor and his wife were led to the doctor's house, to try to decide what next to do.... but first, showers, clean clothes, a meal lifted from a store's cellar, and a good night's sleep.
The next morning, the doctor's wife is making coffee and breakfast...
and the blind man's sight suddenly returns.
Glory, glory!
The others trust that their vision will also return!
They will all be able to return to their lives!
Only the older man with the eye patch and the woman who had been a call girl show some sadness about the news.
They had been treated to life as part of a group that cared for each other and had looked toward becoming a couple...
now, would they?
Could they?
Wow.
I don't know that I particularly liked the "happy" ending.
Even though the virus itself had not directly caused deaths, many had died, nonetheless.
People dying in fatal car wrecks, people dying in fatal falls, people dying from wounds that could not be properly treated because medical staff were also blind.
Then there are those who were killed by looters and rapists and people driven mad by the loss of their sight; those slain by armed guards, desperate to keep themselves sighted and apart from those tainted by the virus.
I'm sure there were also some who died by their own hand rather than spend the rest of their uncertain lives with only a screen of milky white as their field of vision..
No mention was made of any of these losses of life.
At least with this pandemic of 2019 - yes, that's when it began in the world at large, though our little corner would be safe for several months in 2020 - the loss of life has been carefully tabulated on a daily basis, as this very real virus can, and does, directly kill many of those who become infected by it.
I've got some "Quantum Leap" to distract me now.
And, like last night's episode, these two from Season 2 are appropriate.
The first, "The Americanization of Machiko", follows a young Japanese woman who has married into a small-town family by wedding their sailor son.
(The first person to go blind from the virus was Japanese.)
The episode that follows?
It's about a blind pianist.
Right place, right time.
Wow.
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