 "beautiful and interesting movie" | 2009-10-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1SZ0W8X0CJFUB |
This movie should be implemented in the education of all kinds of health care professionals. Physicians, nurses, specialists etc.
Emma Thompson is wonderful and you are really getting involved in her emotions, illness, and finally the loneliness .
Furthermore you realize how import the language is to communicate en better understand each other
Great movie!
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| "A Painful Journey" | 2009-09-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3647EHXFB3JXW |
I was attending an oncology nursing convention the first time I saw this film shortly after its release. My best memory of it was that it was the most searingly honest portrayal of a person with cancer that I has ever witnessed outside of hospital. It was also the most powerfully honest portrayal of a nurse that I had seen in any media. My recent second viewing only confirmed those impressions.
Wit is based on a play by Margaret Edson who at one time in her life worked as a unit clerk on an oncology ward. This teleplay was written by Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson, both Academy Award winners. Ms. Thompson inhabits the role of Vivian Bearing, a British professor of English, specializing in the poetry of John Donne. Bearing is a brilliant scholar, aloof, and demanding as much of her students as she does of herself. She is both feared and revered on campus. Then she gets diagnosed with Stage IV advanced ovarian cancer and is enrolled in a very difficult eight month course of an experimental chemotherapy regimen. She has never married, has never had children, and has won more rivals than friends in her academic career.
Nearly the whole action of the film takes place in hospital. In transposing the piece from theater to film, the director retains the device of the character speaking directly to the audience in extended monologues. Though not a properly cinematic device, it works perhaps even better here than on the stage because of the camera's ability to frame Thompson's face in close-ups that convincingly capture her deteriorating appearance and her growing desperation.
"Wit" can be defined as a form of intellectual humor. The monologues demand careful listening, part of their power stemming from erudite puns and other language tricks and paradoxes. Wit is also the basis of style in metaphysical poetry such as Donne's, a contemporary of Shakespeare. This "wit' along with Donne's obsession with the intersections of love, death, and religion become central to Bearing's metamorphosis. Over the course of treatment her health declines. The tumor shrinks but metastasizes. She comes to realize that she has devalued love and affection in favor of reason and intellect.
Her doctors are researchers rather than clinicians. They are drawn to the science rather than the art of healing. There are certainly oncologists with more empathy and better bedside manner than seen here. But the portraits are not exaggerated. Their determined, exacting approach to science mirrors Prof Bearing's approach to literature. Of all the hospital staff, it is only her nurse, Susie Monahan, who recognizes and respects the humanity of this dying woman's situation. Actress Audra McDonald (who would be later cast as a physician inTV's Gray's Anatomy) manages to play Susie as an authentic human being without falling to sentimentality or stereotype.
This is possibly Emma Thompson's best screen performance. She is totally convincing as a cancer patient, whether she is enduring intractible nausea and vomiting or hoarsely whispering poetry through a great veil of pain. Having spent two decades working in hospital, I can say that the entire production is very realistic and true. Medical procedures, staff interactions, power differentials in the hospital hierarchy, nurses working to advocate for patients are reflected rather than highlighted as the drama proceeds. The "Grand Rounds" scene would be funny if it weren't so sad. "That was very educational" Bearing says, "I am learning to suffer."
"Wit" remains one of the very best examples of this genre. It is brilliantly informative at both an intellectual and emotional level. I would recommend it to anyone, but especially to anyone close to someone dealing with cancer. For persons with cancer, watching this film can be an enlightening though painful journey of self-exploration. |
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| "The Best of Emma Thomson, Bravo!!!" | 2009-09-02 |
| - Reviewed By rio_rico_silver |
| Her performance makes this movie one of my favorite. Though, this film was not widely known, this surely goes on my top 5 perfomances. |
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| "Amazing Movie!" | 2009-07-12 |
| - Reviewed By adauria3 |
| This is an incredible story about a woman who is diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. We go through with her ("her" being Emma Thompson, the lead actress) as she goes through an experimental 8 treatments with the fullest dose of chemotherapy possible. It's funny, it's beautiful and it will definitely make you cry. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. |
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| "Close to Heart" | 2009-07-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A21U2JF166IID0 |
This is a wonderfully put together movie by HBO starring the exeptional Emma Thompson. I'm not going to get into the specifics of the movie, but I would like to point out that I know that there are people who were turned off by the Professors snobbish behavior. But that's what makes the movie that much more interesting, the fact that Cancer does not discriminate! Whether you're rich, poor, black, white, intellectual or mentally disabled it can affect you.
All that said, my wife myself and son watched this movie and were going thru the same things that are in the movie regarding the hospitals care, nurses, doctors etc. We all cried watching this movie! And it was shocking just how realistic the movie is, which made it all the more emotional draining. My wife passed from stage IV ovarian cancer on Aug 1, 2001. This movie was ironically put on DVD Sept 11, 2001. I just received the strength to purchase it! |
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 "Not very witty" | 2009-06-14 |
| - Reviewed By cookie99999 |
| This was a rather depressing film. Of course, Emma Thompson does a fine job with the role (which is the only reason I am giving it 3 stars), but in the end, this movie was about death not life. For instance, we see only her experience with cancer treatment, not the life she's living in between the treatment, so we have a hard time building empathy for the character because we don't really know who she is. Yes, we see little glimpses along the way, but we don't know the life that she has led. I personally did not find the dialogue very witty, as the title suggests, which may have redeemed the movie somewhat. If the movie has any message at all, it is that our health care system is lacking in "care". |
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