On Adapting Saramago by Miriam Ringel

Miriam Ringel debating on Blindness' adaptation with respondent Aida Jordão

 Blindness is an adaptation of the 1995 novel by Portuguese Nobel-laureate José Saramago about an outbreak of contagious blindness. No organic cause can be found for this condition which manifests itself not as a descent into darkness but as if they were caught in a mist, or had fallen into a milky sea.  The story is situated in an unnamed modern city, whose authorities leave the blind to take care of themselves in an unused sanitarium. The situation descends into chaos and hell, as it reveals mostly the deep ugly truths of human nature alongside with hope for compassion, solidarity and dignity.

Not every adaptation of a novel into a film is good. Let us think about "One Hundred years of Solitude". No one dares to make a film of it and Garcia Marques himself was against it. This was also the attitude of Saramago, not to give the rights to make a film adaptation of his novels.

Saramago comments on this issue in a conversation with Carlos Reis:

CR - Why did you agree that your romance will be an opera and you did not agree that this same novel will have film adaptation? I am talking about Memorial Do Convento (Baltazar and Blimunda).

JS - Maybe I cannot say why, but the truth is that I accept more easily to make a theatre of my novel. This is what was done with Blimunda, because in one way or another opera is theater; there is a previous work to music writing which is the organization of what will be told, that we call libretto and is already a theatrical construction on a text that is a novel, it is not theater, and what I say, "from this novel what I take to display on top of stage is this and this and this."

Therefore, the novel being dramatized, left ninety percent of what is being told in the book and takes advantage of what has dramatic value or can be, by opposition, contradiction or conflict, exposed on stage. I accept much better that than accept (and so far I refused and I do not think that I will accept) the adaptation of my novels to cinema. And probably for this reason: because in the case of the film, which narrates the story much more than the theater, it will wish to tell all that I told, obviously leaving out what is specific to the novel, that is the way of  narrating, the style, all that.

In the case of the opera - as was with Blimunda - or dramatization of my novels, if I were to agree to this, what happens there is a succession of articulated-frame situations but who do not aspire to tell the book. And that's what makes them something else, while the cinema, in a certain way, only would like it to be the same. The dramatization of Memorial do Convento does not "compete", does not come into competition with the novel. But the film yes, enters; and that's where the difference is. And I add, as I sometimes say that in the case of adaptation to cinema, I would not want to see the faces of my characters, in theater I don’t mind, it does not shock me. But probably I could not bear to see Madonna, to give an example rather inept, to represent Blimunda or Mary Magdalene in a film. For if, in Memorial do Convento, I barely described Blimunda! I just said at a certain point that she is tall and thin and has a middle blonde hair or the color of honey, that's all; I talk a lot of eyes, but not for describing them. And no one knows how are the nose or mouth of Blimunda. (Carlos Reis (1998)Diálogos com José Saramago pp. 106-107.)

Don McKellar, a Canadian screenwriter, read the book and became obsessed with the story. He asked his producer [Niv Fichman] about getting the rights, but the latter was cautious. He asked McKeller: ‘Are you sure you want to be Mr. Apocalypse?’

McKellar did, but it took years to secure permissions. Far bigger names in film were approaching Saramago, including Gael Garcia Bernal (who appears in the film), Fernando Meirelles (who directs) and Whoopi Goldberg. Saramago turned down everyone. And then, in the summer of 1999, McKellar and his producer received a call to come out to the author’s home on the Canary Islands, in Lanzarote.

McKellar worked the script for six years — on and off. For years, Blindness was supposed to be McKellar’s next outing as a director, but it went to Oscar-nominated Brazil’s Fernando Mereilles instead, who had scored hits with City of God and The Constant Gardener. McKellar felt O.K. and loved working with Meirelles and he also plays the role of the thief in the film.

"Blindness" doesn’t easily lend itself to cinema. We, as readers shall lose not only our imagination, but also our 'moral imagination', as it is totally different to see and to read.

At the premiere in Cannes the film did not receive favorable critic. Justin Chang wrote in Variety that “Saramago… long resisted the idea of having his 1995 masterwork adapted for the big screen. Meirelles has proven the Portuguese writer’s instincts to be sadly correct…" And Stephen Garret in Esquire wrote: “That the director succeeds more often than he fails proves the resilience of Saramago’s potent themes as well as Meirelles’s skillful visual language. But Blindnessstumbles because it’s a fundamental mismatch: "a visceral director better known for searing portraits of real-life injustices shouldn’t really make a parable.”

Meirelles said that the only thing the author asked was that the city will be anonymous, so they shoot the film in São Paulo, Montevideo and Toronto. Saramago saw the film when it was finished and he loved it. When he was asked about the critics on Meirelles' work he said that he never interferes in the work of others.  

Finally, the attempt to make a universal film, I think there was no need to cast a mélange of ethnicities and accents. This does not make sense of greater reliability. I think that the film achieved the generic look of the allegory without providing any of the substance. Let us now watch and judge.

Miriam Ringel and Hudson Moura

Miriam Ringel talking at the course PRT258: Introduction to Luso-Brazilian Studies