Portuguese author José Saramago was reluctant to grant film rights to his 1995 novel about an epidemic of white blindness that strikes citizens of an unnamed country. Saramago worried about how the novels violence, rape and degradation would be treated by the wrong filmmaker. The well-regarded Brazilian director Fernando Meiralles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) won the rights, on the condition that he set the film in an unrecognizable city (it was filmed primarily in São Paolo). Some of the authors fears, alas, were justified: Meiralles film is a technically accomplished but often excruciating experience. Meiralles and screenwriter Don McKellar changed the setting from the 1930s or 40s to a contemporary period but retained its cast of allegorically named characters: Doctor (Mark Ruffalo), Doctors Wife (Julianne Moore, whos excellent), Man With Black Eye Patch (Danny Glover), Bartender/King of Ward 3 (Gael García Bernal), Woman With Dark Glasses (Alice Braga). In the end, the characters suffering (and, by extension, the audiences) feels unjustified and unredeemed. HH