Yes, there's a Julianne Moore Moment in Blindness. You know, the requisite scene in which the actress' face stretches to its high-cheekboned limits in a look of utter anguish, the tears streaming, the teeth clenched, chin atwitter. (Assignment to Final Cut Studio users: Assemble a montage of Moore Moments, from Children of Men, Freedomland, Magnolia, et cetera, et cetera.)
And why not? If you were Moore's nameless wife in Fernando Meirelles' hopelessly arty apocalyptic parable, you'd be in the throes of agony, too. Abruptly, inexplicably, in an unnamed city, the population is turning blind. The government proclaims a "state of crisis," and the afflicted, their vision gone, save for seeing a skein of whiteness, are quarantined in rundown, prisonlike barracks. The food is tossed to them by jittery guards, like zookeepers throwing meat at beasts in a cage.
