Shared vision

Call it absurdity or just survival, but Fernando Meirelles and his stellar cast laughed a lot on the Canadian set of their bleak disaster drama, Blindness.

“A lot of fun!” says the Brazilian filmmaker Meirelles.

“We had a great time,” says American star Julianne Moore.

“We made fun of everything, even the rape scene,” says Meirelles, who adds he is not being disrespectful. “We made it fun for us to shoot. Maybe it was because it was a hard content and it was a self-defence. It became all jokes all the time.”

Even shooting in the small city of Guelph, Ontario, was a benefit, uniting cast and crew because there was nothing else to do but shoot and then socialize. Meirelles says that it was only on weekends that he could sneak out to Toronto for films and sushi.

“Guelph was great!” says Moore. “But the prison for the criminally insane is not so nice.”

That abandoned, 19th-century institution, with its chilling atmosphere, is the central location for Blindness, which screens at this month’s Toronto International Film Festival and then opens across the country on October 3rd. The film is based on a dystopian novel by Portuguese leftist José Saramago, tells the story of a strange affliction — contagious blindness — that throws society into chaos. Those who succumb to the disease are quarantined. As the situation deteriorates, the inmates reorder their lives in cruel ways, like an adult version of Lord of the Flies.

The film is an international co-production between Canada, Brazil and Japan and stars an international cast of Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Brazilians and Mexicans. Besides Moore, key players include Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael García Bernal, Alice Braga and Canadian Don McKellar, who also wrote the script from Saramago’s novel.

Meirelles cast his screenwriter as a thief.

“Partially,” says McKellar, “I think he wanted me to be around anyway, so it was just an opportunity to get me on set. And then he kills me off so there is nothing else to do. What I like about the part is that he’s such an a--hole and you think: Is this guy going to be the villain? And then you realize, no, he’s a lightweight, he’s a pathetic little loser! Of course, you like playing those parts.”

Meirelles — who along with Moore and McKellar is doing interviews at the Cannes Film Festival, where Blindness had its world premiere — says that because the film is meant to be a global story, and not rooted in one city, country or culture, the cast had to be multi-ethnic. It was a juggling act. “In the end, I’m very happy with the cast and everyone is very effective in their parts.”

He gives special mention to Moore, who plays the only sighted person in quarantine, hiding her ability so she can stay with her doctor husband, played by Ruffalo.

“Julianne!” Meirelles says, citing her name in amazement. “It is such a great performance. She really carried the film, which is as it should be because it is told from her point of view.”

Moore can joke on set and appear totally casual, Meirelles says. Then, suddenly, she has to commit a murder or burst into tears on-camera, doing so instantly, performing at the edge of the abyss. “That is just talent!” he says. “She is fantastic and lovely to work with!”

Moore took the role sight unseen. “Frankly, it was Fernando. I am so intrigued by his work,” she says. Among his credits, Meirelles directed the Brazilian gang shocker City of God and the lyrical thriller The Constant Gardener.

“I didn’t even know what he was doing,” Moore says about agreeing to star in Blindness before she knew the storyline. “I actually didn’t know the book. I hadn’t read it. But my son’s guitar teacher said: ‘I just read that book and I thought you’d be perfect for it.’”

Moore finally felt the weight of responsibility. “It is really daunting, particularly when you do read the book and realize he has told the story through this woman.”

Yet much of the novel is internalized. “How do I dramatize that?” Moore asked herself. She says Meirelles helped tremendously. “What is amazing about him, and is the reason that I wanted to work with him, is that he tells his stories in these great big sweeping cinematic gestures. But then he paints it with this teeny tiny brush. He’ll stay on a face. He’ll register an eye flick. Every tiny gesture is meaningful to him. He is interested in subtlety in a way that not a lot of people are.

“So I knew that, with Fernando, that’s what the deal was. Then, if I was going to bear the responsibility of the story, I just tried to be in it minute-by-minute, step-by-step. Don’t get ahead.”

In the end, she says, Blindness is a fable which serves as a universal warning to mankind.

“I always say that movies don’t predict the future, they merely reflect the culture. The last five or 10 years, there had been so much that has happened politically and culturally in terms of natural disasters and manmade disasters. It’s kind of overwhelming for us and there is a huge sense of anxiety, globally. This film definitely reflects on that.”

Bruce Kirkland is a Toronto-based writer. He covers movies for The Toronto Sun and Sun Media.