Um Ensaio sobre a Americanização
FoiSe foi.
Que triste foi o fim, quero dizer, o começo da carreira de Blindness. E eu diria que seu maior pecado foi levar para o inglês um filme que deveria ter nascido em português.
Meirelles quer curtir a vida internacional; quer fazer filme globalizado. Disse no Roda Viva que seu futuro é o cinema internacional; que pro Brasil só presta TV. No entanto veste camiseta da Seleção em entrevista gringa pra dizer que não é da laia deles; Fernando não está nem aqui nem lá.
Pés em dois mundos, porém em nenhum deles. Foi assim que Fernando entregou um filme indeciso; justamente em um tema em que se exige comprometimento sem concessões. Ele abriu a ferida mas achou mais rentável mostrar o lado doce. A equação não fecha: ele tentou manter sinais opostos nos dois lados da igualdade.
O filme desabou no Box Office.
Almodóvar nunca abandonou a Espanha e o espanhol. Blindness era para se chamar O Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira com Fernanda Torres no lugar da Juliane Moore com menos de um quarto do budget de um Weinstein. Podia ser até Claudia Raia. O mundo queria sabores diferentes e lhe foi entregue no lugar um produto pasteurizado em screenings embalado em thriller que não chega lá porque nem mesmo quer ser um thriller.
Vaidade ou arrogância, Fernando Meirelles se achou muito caro para fazer um filme brasileiro com a desculpa de que aqui não é rentável ou prático. Agora está amargando o preço de ser Americano:
I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of “cultural lamination” that the USA is perpetrating on the planet. An illusion was created that a supposed collective culture would arithmetically correspond to the sum of personal cultures.
de José Saramago em entrevista para os gringos.
...
My Review about Blindness:
This movie isn't really about a population that went blind, but about
imprisonment and its corrupted micro-power structures that we see in
every 'prison-break' flick. And it doesn't try to be subtle as A Flew
Over the Cuckoos Nest imprisonment but goes into black/white good/bad
no-shades of Stanford Prison experiment.
Strangely, Blindness has a condescending vision about blind people to
be so powerless, they even don't care were the bathroom is; they accept
the situation as victims passing through no madness and revolt that
hunger and abuse creates in a collectivity. The only one who acts is
the one who sees (Julianne) when is too late and for the wrongest
reason: revenge.
Women must hate this movie, Julianne's husband cheats in front of her
and she accepts it right away (sure, he has his male ego hurt by her
nursing him around, but her acceptance of his cheating just doesn't
make him feel even more pitiful?) They gone to voluntary rape and she
accepts it even having the greatest tool in the land of the blind. Does
it tries to portrait that a strong woman is the one above pride? (are
we in medieval Japan?). Maybe in another context it would be
reasonable, but the story never goes deep or clever enough for the
audience to agree with her passivity.
And many things doesn't make sense: the guards shooting blind people in
the head near the outside walls; no one helps them with masks
protecting themselves from infection; that only Julianne finds food in
the dark; that the blind people on the streets doesn't talk to each
other and behave like mindless zombies. What the evil blind King will
do with his stolen jewelry?
It happens because, like the book, everything are metaphors, symbolisms
and archetypes. The real consequences aren't there and it was a
conscious choice from the authors (Saramago, Fernando and McKlevar).
Maybe they were too blind by Nobel prizes and Oscars to see that this
tale doesn't bring nothing new to the table. But still it is their
microcosmos of our society.
Another strange problem is the message: The good dog is the dog who
chose to not eat dead flesh from humans for survival. It should be:
good dogs bring dead human flesh to save you from hunger. That you must
do the unthinkable and distort the rules and morals of society to
protect who you care. Even if is wrong. But the authors of this story
see it as a savagery, that we turn into animals doing that. But isn't
that the Truth? Contradictorily, the story condemns the system, the
civilization itself in a portrait where authorities are heartless
bureaucrats that doesn't care about us. And it is just another
generalization that doesn't represent the whole truth, like stating
that all politicians are equally corrupted.
But that was the question that Blindness tried to bring: Can we live
with no authorities without turning up into savages? After all, this is
a story about the collapse of society and Saramago's sequel 'Seeing' is
about the entire population casting blank ballots after the disastrous
epidemic of Blindness.
This question fails profoundly as the movie states that people are
inherently good or bad; even in an apocalyptic situation this statement
made Blindness shallow as a Mad Max continuation. To be good or evil is
not in our genes, it is a choice, and that sometimes we are blind
enough to make the right choices.
...
Labels: Blindness, Fernando Meirelles
