Can anyone identify this movie?

[Houlahound]

If you're talking about the movie by that title from 1997 staring Nicole Deboer I just checked my local library system and they have it in my county. I have reserved it, it could take about a week to arrive, maybe less. I'll let you know what I think of it.

It's free on YouTube.

 

[killgar]

It's free on YouTube.

I can't watch movies on a little computer screen, feels too claustrophobic for me, I gotta watch them on a tv. DVD's from the library are totally free.

In regards to "The Boy With Green Hair", I'm not sure how well-known it is. I'm not even sure how I know about it. I think maybe I saw it listed in TV Guide at some point (yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it).

As for color movies, "The Wizard of OZ" with Judy Garland from 1939 was mostly in color, so color movies have been around at least that long.

 

[Piso Mojado]

I thought I'd provide some closure to this thread, and answer my own question. I found the movie, completely by accident. I just got done watching it on DVD, I checked it out from the library with no idea it was the same movie (talk about a coincidence). It's called "Blindness". And although I got several of the details right, I got a few wrong.

The movie was released in 2008, a lot more recently than I thought.

It stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.

I got much of the plot correct- People are quarantined in a building after an outbreak of a disease (one that causes blindness). A group of men take control of the food supply, and at first demand payment in the form of jewelry, then they demand sexual service from the women. This leads to violence. Then the group leaves the building and discover their guards are gone (and enter a world where everyone is blind).

It must have been over ten years since I've seen it. And clearly I need to see a movie more than once to form a good memory of it. At least now I won't be forever tormented by not knowing what the movie was.

Congratulations, killgar, and thanks!

Blindness (2008) is a film adaptation of the novel Blindness (1995) by José Saramago (1922–2010), my second favorite Nobel laureate novelist after Thomas Mann. José was an old Portuguese Communist who wrote for his desk drawer until Portugal's Estado Novo, the oldest legacy regime from pre-WW2 fascism, was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. It is hard to get recognized as a serious novelist when you start publishing in your 50s, but he did pretty well for himself considering the circumstances.

Blindness is about a society overwhelmed and ultimately destroyed by fascism, with a story bent to the fantastic and non-realistic to make it universal and for all time, as opposed to a political thriller like Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. The movie adaptation flew in under my radar and I plan on watching it after reading the novel, always my first choice in these cases.

There is a good Wikipedia article about Blindness (2008), which is full of spoilers and best avoided until you've seen the movie. This little bit about José vs. the film industry is interesting and safe enough to quote.

The rights to the 1995 novel Blindness were closely guarded by author José Saramago. Saramago explained, "I always resisted because it's a violent book about social degradation, rape, and I didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands." Director Fernando Meirelles had wanted to direct a film adaptation in 1997, perceiving it as "an allegory about the fragility of civilization". Saramago originally refused to sell the rights to Meirelles, Whoopi Goldberg, or Gael García Bernal. In 1999, producer Niv Fichman and Canadian screenwriter Don McKellar visited Saramago in the Canary Islands; Saramago allowed their visit on condition that they not discuss buying the rights. McKellar explained the changes he intended to make from the novel and what the focus would be, and two days later he and Fichman left Saramago's home with the rights. McKellar believed they had succeeded where others had failed because they properly researched Saramago; he was suspicious of the film industry and had therefore resisted other studios' efforts to obtain the rights through large sums of money alone. Conditions set by Saramago were for the film to be set in a country that would not be recognizable to audiences, and that the canine in the novel, the Dog of Tears, should be a big dog.

Saramago was a notoriously prickly writer. Portugal's Catholic Church maintained a list of heretical and prohibited books after the Vatican abandoned theirs, and when José was told he had been Indexed, he told reporters "I think priests and nuns should stick to their prayers and leave normal people alone." His next book, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), was the most anti-religious novel I have read, outdoing Diderot's The Nun, Stendahl's The Red and the Black, and Feuchtwanger's Jephthah and his Daughter, which I had not thought possible. When Portugal's Socialist Prime Minister removed The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from Aristeion Prize's short list as "religiously offensive," José went into exile in the Spanish Canaries and never returned to Portugal.

 

[killgar]

Congratulations, kilgar, and thanks!

Blindness (2008) is a film adaptation of the novel Blindness (1995) by José Saramago (1922–2010), my second favorite Nobel laureate novelist after Thomas Mann. José was an old Portuguese Communist who wrote for his desk drawer until Portugal's Estado Novo, the oldest legacy regime from pre-WW2 fascism, was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution of 1974. It is hard to get recognized as a serious novelist when you start publishing in your 50s, but he did pretty well for himself considering the circumstances.

Blindness is about a society overwhelmed and ultimately destroyed by fascism, with a story bent to the fantastic and non-realistic to make it universal and for all time, as opposed to a political thriller like Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. The movie adaptation flew in under my radar and I plan on watching it after reading the novel, always my first choice in these cases.

There is a good Wikipedia article about Blindness (2008), which is full of spoilers and best avoided until you've seen the movie. This little bit about José vs. the film industry is interesting and safe enough to quote.



Saramago was a notoriously prickly writer. Portugal's Catholic Church maintained a list of heretical and prohibited books after the Vatican abandoned theirs, and when José was told he had been Indexed, he told reporters "I think priests and nuns should stick to their prayers and leave normal people alone." His next book, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), was the most anti-religious novel I have read, outdoing Diderot's The Nun, Stendahl's The Red and the Black, and Feuchtwanger's Jephthah and his Daughter, which I had not thought possible. When Portugal's Socialist Prime Minister removed The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from Aristeion Prize's short list as "religiously offensive," José went into exile in the Spanish Canaries and never returned to Portugal.

Thanks Piso. And thanks for the background info, interesting stuff. As a movie fan I'm always interested in the backstory of movies I like.

I read some negative reviews of the movie, but It's not uncommon for me to enjoy a movie, then do some research on it and find very negative reviews. Just goes to show the value of letting other people tell you what movies to see.

I'm not saying "Blindness" is one of the greatest movies ever made, but I found it compelling, and definitely worth two hours of my time.

I'm still amazed at how I found it. I check out about a dozen or so movies a week from the library, and this just happened to be one of them. And I didn't have the slightest idea it was the one.

I was watching it, and when the leader of the bad guys said they wanted jewelry in exchange for food I said to myself "Whoa, that sound just like the movie I'm looking for", then when he said they wanted the women I said "No way, could this be a remake of the movie I'm looking for ", because I was certain that the movie I was looking for was much older. Then I started recognizing characters, and scenes, and lines of dialogue, and it all came back to me and I realized "Holy sh#%! This is THE MOVIE!"

Life is funny.