Surprisingly different to how I imagined

I saw the trailer for this film and thought it was going to be an, albeit black, comedy. How wrong I was. Okay, there were a few funny moments here and there – in fact, when it was funny it was probably funnier than a lot of supposed ‘comedies.’ However, a comedy it was not.

The Land of the Blind takes place in an unknown, fictional country in an undisclosed point in time (possibly around the nineteen eighties, as the Internet seems conspicuously absent). The country is basically a fascist dictatorship, imprisoning anyone who speaks out against the regime.

First of all, the initial message is too loud – power corrupts/only a fraction are living ‘the good life’ while the majority suffers. All the actors do their bit, but the film falls down on not really knowing what it wants to be – sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it tries to be, most times it’s quite bloodthirsty, leaving it harder to laugh at the bits that are humorous. Then the film changes at just over halfway through and the laughs dry up and it turns into a kind of 1984/Brazil type story. And then it ends, leaving the viewers slightly unclear as to what was the overall point/message and wondering what they just watched.

I didn’t not enjoy the film. It was certainly different. It’ll probably develop a cult following over time.

Perhaps if David Lynch did politics, he would make Land of the Blind?

If you want something a bit different, you could do worse.