Friday, May 16, 2008

Kingdom of the Blind

One of my favourite novels of the last few years was Jose Saramago's "Blindness", and I'd always thought it would make a brilliant, if difficult film. Telling the story of a blindness contagion that passes from person to person; leading to the blind being quarantined, and then left, as the world outside becomes equally sightless, it's obviously rich in metaphor. Yet, the novel is also a thriller, and a philosophical novel about what it is to be human. I am very much looking forward to seeing it in the cinema, now that it has opened at Cannes to good reviews.

2 comments:

Tania Hershman said...

I loved the book too, I had no idea it was being made into a film, thanks for letting me know. I am intrigued as to how they translate Saramago's astonishing prose - no paragraph breaks, no quotation marks - to celluloid! I suspect that won't translate, but the plot is amazing enough in itself.

Adrian Slatcher said...

It's by the director of City of God, which in itself was a remarkable movie, so the signs are good. The English translation was difficult to understand at times, and I read it with unaccustomed slowness, being astonished on every page; so its only right that a Brazilian director has taken it on.