Blindness (Vintage classics)

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Tokyo International Film Festival | Exclusive Interview with Director Fernando Meirelles of "BLINDNESS"!".

To Benjamin, allegory signals a dissociation, a profound difference between the use of language and its cultural past, a process that breaks any classical metaphysical relation between the image as being and its meaning. This understanding of allegory relates to decay, to the finitude of everything that is historical or natural, with the work of art no longer able to serve as a totality that conciliates contradictions. In Benjamin’s materialistic redefinition, allegory represents a form of deconstruction, and it is up to the reader, to us, to reconstruct meaning, if only in part. The doctor and his wife invite their new "family" to their apartment, where they establish a mutually supportive long-term home. Then, just as suddenly as his sight had been lost, the driver – the first man to lose their sight – recovers his sight, indicating that the body had fought off the disease, and that the blindness is ultimately temporary. They celebrate and their hope is restored. The Day of the Triffids, the 1951 John Wyndham novel (and its many adaptations) about societal collapse following widespread blindness. This also explains why his novels appear to become more and more “allegorical” as time goes by, especially after The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, published in 1991. From that moment on, something changed in Saramago’s work. The first time he himself alluded to the change was during a 1998 lecture in Turin, Italy, where he compared his literary work to a statue made of stone. Until The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, he said, he had been describing the surface of the statue. But since Blindness, he was trying to describe the material itself, to penetrate the interior of the stone, looking for what he thought to be essential, for what usually remains hidden.Nobel-wiining[sic] novelist Saramago dies aged 87". The Hindu. Chennai. 18 June 2010 . Retrieved 18 June 2010. Or consider Seeing, which Saramago published in 2004. Something of a sequel, or rather conclusion, to Blindness, this novel has people become lucid, with a vast majority of voters casting blank ballots during elections. Once again, the government reacts aggressively, accusing its own citizens of terrorism. And once again, our supposedly democratic institutions fail to respond to reality, as Saramago always warns us they will. Ursula K. Le Guin, whose literary work I consider to be as philosophically important as Saramago’s, felt that Seeing says more about the days we live in than any other book she had ever read. Had she not passed in 2018, she may well have related our recent pandemic and wars to Saramago’s writing as well. Morris, Wesley (October 3, 2008). "In 'Blindness,' Moore's a sight to behold". The Boston Globe . Retrieved February 19, 2011. The José Saramago Foundation was founded by José Saramago in June 2007, with the aim to defend and spread the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the promotion of culture in Portugal just like in all the countries, and protection of the environment. [41] The José Saramago Foundation is located in the historic Casa dos Bicos in the city of Lisbon. A sequel titled Seeing was published in 2004. Blindness was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008.

Julianne Moore as the Doctor's Wife, the only person immune to the epidemic of blindness. Her sight is kept a secret by her husband and others, though as time goes on, she feels isolated in being the only one with sight. [5] Moore described her character's responsibility: "Her biggest concern in the beginning is simply her husband. But her ability to see ultimately both isolates her and makes her into a leader." The director also gave Moore's character a wardrobe that would match the actor's skin and dyed blond hair, giving her the appearance of a "pale angel". [5]

In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. He spent vacations with his grandparents in Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig-trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying goodbye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling." [11] Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12.

Portugal declared two days of mourning. [7] [8] There were tributes from senior international politicians: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Bernard Kouchner (France) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (Spain), while Cuba's Raúl and Fidel Castro sent flowers. [7] He was also a supporter of Iberian Federalism. In a 2008 press conference for the filming of Blindness he asked, in reference to the Great Recession, "Where was all that money poured on markets? Very tight and well kept; then suddenly it appears to save what? lives? no, banks." He added, "Marx was never so right as now", and predicted "the worst is still to come." [37] Awards and accolades [ edit ] When we think of someone, when we hear their name, we always conjure an image in our head; a picture is formed before our eyes. Here we are with a bunch of people who no longer can rely on their sight so, in not giving them names, Saramago also puts us in the dark, forcing us to rely instead on personal characteristics and descriptions given to conjure these characters ourselves. “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”

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We see the dismay of bureaucrats, the excitement of journalists, the hysteria of the government, and the mild non-response of the citizens, who, when asked how they voted, refuse to say, reminding the questioner that the question is illegal. The satire is at first quite funny, and I thought it was going to be a light, Voltairean tale. Fernando Meirelles to Direct Blindness". ComingSoon.net. Crave Online Media, LLC. 2006-09-13. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30 . Retrieved 2007-06-18.

Tens of Thousands of Blind Americans Object to the Movie 'Blindness' ". American Council of the Blind. 2008-09-29. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07 . Retrieved 2008-10-01. a b "Metacritic: 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 2, 2009 . Retrieved January 11, 2009. Tokyo International Film Festival | "BLINDNESS" Press Conference with Director Fernando Meirelles, Actresses Julian Moore, Yoshino Kimura and more!!".Saramago's English language translator, Margaret Jull Costa, paid tribute to his "wonderful imagination," calling him "the greatest contemporary Portuguese writer". [23] Saramago continued his writing until his death. His most recent publication, Claraboia, was published posthumously in 2011. Saramago had suffered from pneumonia a year before his death. Having been thought to have made a full recovery, he had been scheduled to attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2010. [23] A city is hit by an epidemic of “white blindness” that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations, and assaulting women. In this sense, Saramago’s work is never detached from real life. Whether dealing with impoverished farmers at the beginning of the 20 th century as in Raised from the Ground; the construction of an oversized convent in 18 th-century Portugal as in Baltasar and Blimunda; the magical scission of the Iberian Peninsula as in The Stone Raft; or the sudden disappearance of death in Death with Interruptions, there is always a firm and solid link to our current time and society. The José Saramago Foundation announced in October 2011 the publication of a so-called "lost novel" published as Skylight ( Claraboia in Portuguese). It was written in the 1950s and remained in the archive of a publisher to whom the manuscript had been sent. Saramago remained silent about the work up to his death. The book has been translated into several languages. [27] Style and themes [ edit ] Saramago at Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in Bogotá in 2007 As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that’s bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.