さらけ出される「人の心の闇」

　What would happen if suddenly everyone went blind for no apparent reason and there was no cure?

　An answer can be found in "Blindness," a 1995 novel by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago. We would become a very primitive people, letting our basic instincts take control. Violence, rape, theft and murder ... all kinds of evils lurking deep inside of us would emerge in various forms.

　Due to its serious theme and unique perspective that allows readers to have their own interpretations, "Blindness" had been considered almost impossible to make into a film. Saramago had refused to sell the film rights for a long time, saying seeing it on the big screen would destroy all imagination.

　However, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles ("City of God," "The Constant Gardener"), fascinated by the novel, has finally made it into a film. The 53-year-old director de-scribes the story's appeal, saying that it lets us know "how thin the distance between a civilized world and barbarism."

「闇の世界」を体験

　"We are very sophisticated and educated and then something happens - we reveal animals" hidden inside us, he said in a recent interview in Tokyo.

　In the film "Blindness," people who have lost their sight are sent to an asylum and placed under heavy guard. Confined to such a closed society, their raw instinct for survival emerges, instead of helping each other to cope.

　"I don't think the story exaggerates their reactions. People really kill each other in order to eat and to rape," Meirelles said.

　Actors in the film are each given the freedom to tailor their characters, including the two Japanese cast members, Yusuke Iseya and Yoshino Kimura, who play a couple living abroad. All the cast and staff, including the two, joined a workshop to experience "blindness" before the shooting. Wearing sleeping masks, they tried to live a normal daily life, eating, walking and going to the bathroom.

　"It was a terror. Just terror," Kimura said in an interview. "I was frozen and keeping still made me very depressed. I now deeply understand how depressing it could be to be blind."

　Kimura said she had also visited a facility in Shinjuku and spent some time with people who are going blind because of diseases such as glaucoma. She admitted that it was not easy to ask them about their feelings or experiences, but their cooperation greatly helped her to flesh out her character.

　One of the key characters in the film is the "doctor's wife," portrayed by Julianne Moore. She somehow remains immune to the disease, and is the only one who retains her sight.

　I asked Kimura if she had a choice under such circumstances, would she want to be the one who retains her vision?

　"I first thought that being blind would be harder, but now I prefer to be blind, because it's very hard to see every terrible conduct of human beings. And also, I can't imagine how hard it would be to guide all the others as the only person who can see," Kimura said.

人間に見えていないもの

　Meirelles said he wanted to depict a "humanity blinded" in the film. He described blindness as "in some ways a metaphor for ignorance about what we can't understand or we can't really see."

　"We can't see almost anything (the essence of things). We just see the surface. I think we don't even know ourselves. It's amazing how people don't know who they are. Then, if I don't know who I am, I can't know who you are, I can't know who my family is ... it's blindness that starts really with ourselves, I think," he said.

　Humanity blinded is a universal theme, and that is one of the reasons he has created the film's backdrop as a generic city - it could be Tokyo, Paris, New York ... anywhere. It was also at Saramago's request, he said.

　What did Saramago think of the movie? Meirelles visited Saramago in Lisbon to show him the film, and he admitted he was very nervous as it ended.

　"The film finished and the credits were rolling," Meirelles recalled. As Saramago, sitting next to him, didn't say a word for a minute or so, and Meirelles asked himself, "Oh my God, did he like it?!"

　"Then he turned to me and said, ‘Fernando, I'm so happy to see this film like it was when I finished writing the book,' " the director said, adding that Saramago was actually crying.

　"I said, ‘Huh!' It was like the weight of the world being taken off from my shoulders. Very emotional, I even kissed him," the director added.

　Indeed, Meirelles kissed the novelist. The video clip of the moment, recorded by his son Mike, was posted on YouTube (type the keywords "blindness," "Saramago").

　The film "Blindness" opened across Japan on Nov. 22.