Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Mark Ruffalo sets his sights on ‘Blindness’

TORONTO — In “Blindness,” which opens Oct. 3, Mark Ruffalo plays an eye doctor who loses his sight, along with almost everyone else in the unnamed city where the film takes place.

His wife, played by Julianne Moore, fakes blindness so that she can accompany her husband to the abandoned mental hospital where the government quarantines those who can no longer see. Soon those staying there revert to animalistic behavior, but Moore helps salvage the group and its humanity.

Ruffalo, a thoughtful, friendly man, talked recently about playing blind, seeing himself on-screen and not seeing anything at all.

Q: Director Fernando Meirelles takes a very stylized approach, using light to great effect. It couldn’t have looked that way when you were shooting. What was it like to finally see the movie?

A: You do it and it goes away and then months — and sometimes years — later you finally see it. You get a sense of what they’re doing. But a lot of times I was blind, so I didn’t see what they hell they were doing. Sometimes it’s disappointing and sometimes it’s exactly what you thought and sometimes it’s a complete surprise. And that was this movie, because the photography of it is its completely own thing. ...

I had it a little bit in my imagination, but not in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be this kind of moving painting that it ended up being.

Q: When did you first see it?

A: I saw it two weeks ago with two friends. Always, the first time seeing a movie for an actor is a very hairy experience. I’m like, “What am I doing, what is that voice, my God, what am I thinking, why did they cast me, Sean Penn would have been so much better.” I got through all that. The second time, you see it with an audience, I really got the movie, and on a big screen. ... I’m still kind of reeling from it.

Q: Your character goes blind. Did you rehearse a lot?

A: We started at the production office. They put blindfolds on us. They had a little bell. There was a core group of actors, probably 20 of us. They took off. They said, “Follow the sound of the bell.”

Q: How did that go?

A: I’m deaf in one ear, so I have no sound perception. I immediately got lost from the group. And they just let you get lost. Finally I sort of found my way back to them and then basically had to hold on to a total stranger. ... All of a sudden — people have videotape — we’re walking around the streets of Toronto (where the movie was filmed) in this group. It was very moving, it was very frustrating. I had a lot of intense emotion very quickly about it. I didn’t want to be out of control. You panic. You lose the group and you’re panicking. You’re lost! You’re completely disoriented.

Q: The film is based on Jose Saramago’s novel. Why do you think he chose sight as the sense to take away?

A: We’ve given so much importance to sight. We base so much of our judgments, prejudices, conceptions, beliefs on sight — the way people look, their hair, the clothes they’re wearing. We size people up in two seconds. We think we know who they are. We separate, make ourselves better than them. “I’m different, I’m better. ...”

“[Saramago is] saying something about the dehumanizing thing that happens when a whole culture, society, bases so much on something so meaningless. So he takes it away. And then what else does he take away? He takes away food and water and comfort. ... And what happens to people when you take those things away? They become animals.

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Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic is the chief film critic for Gannett. Reach him at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com.