Review in a Hurry: Oh the humanity! There's a lot of it to see in Blindness, a philosophical thriller about a plague of sightlessness, but there's also a fair amount of it you'd probably rather not witness.
The Bigger Picture: This isn't a very pretty picture, but it's definitely art. A mysterious epidemic leaves its victims struck blind; those victims are abandoned in an impromptu leper colony and quickly begin squabbling over limited rations in horrifying conditions. (Really, horrifying. OCD sufferers will have nightmares for weeks.)
There's only one person in this kingdom of the blind who can see: a doctor's wife (Julianne Moore, with all her usual intensity) engaged in a Sisyphean struggle against the tide of refuse and the group's wannabe leaders. As things go from bad to worse, and then continue to get even more spectacularly hideous and degrading, her resolve is put to a series of thought-provoking tests—and so is your patience.
For all its promise, Blindness would be an easy film to walk out of. There's so much agonizingly labored nastiness in it that it's just barely possible to get through it without closing your eyes. Given the commitment to squalor exhibited by director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) and the naturalistic style of the acting, Blindness looks and feels uncomfortably real; what redeems it is its fumbling, groping quest for mercies that may not be coming.
The 180—a Second Opinion: You could write this off as Twilight Zone-style agitprop and nobody would be able tell you differently.