 |
Return Create A Forum - Home |
 |
--------------------------------------------------------- |
|
MS Speaks |
 |
https://msspeaks.createaforum.com |
|
--------------------------------------------------------- |
|
***************************************************** |
|
Return to: MOVIES, TV |
|
***************************************************** |
|
#Post#: 3330-------------------------------------------------- |
|
WIT (2001) |
|
By: agate Date: June 26, 2021, 2:11 am |
|
--------------------------------------------------------- |
|
Wit, starring Emma Thompson, is not a movie to watch if you want |
|
something to cheer you up. |
|
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243664/ |
|
She plays Vivian Bearing, a highly respected literature |
|
professor who at 48 is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She has |
|
been told that the cancer may be too advanced for there to be |
|
much hope, but she undergoes a gruelling series of treatments. |
|
When they don't work, she has to come to terms with her imminent |
|
death. |
|
The title refers to the poet John Donne's use of wit in his |
|
writings. Vivian is an authority on Donne, and the movie |
|
includes several passages from his poetry and prose, worked into |
|
the story. |
|
A viewer might wonder why such a movie was made. We see Vivian's |
|
suffering, which is extreme. Sometimes she addresses the |
|
audience. Usually, though, she is shown interacting with the |
|
younger of her two doctors, Jason, who happens to be a former |
|
student of hers, and with Sue, her nurse, who is |
|
African-American. There is a brief encounter with her own |
|
former mentor, an older woman who pays her a kindly visit in the |
|
hospital when Vivian is nearing the end. |
|
Aside from these people, Vivian seems quite alone. Since we know |
|
from what she has said and from what Jason has said about her |
|
that she was quite prominent in her field, one has to wonder why |
|
former students and colleagues aren't at least coming around to |
|
visit, but maybe academics don't visit the sick? |
|
These are quibbles, however. Emma Thompson gives a magnificent |
|
performance in what must have been a difficult role, to put it |
|
mildly. |
|
One scene was jarring because it seems to be racist. Vivian, |
|
who, in one of her monologues, has harked back to a time in her |
|
childhood when she learned the word "soporific," uses that word |
|
when asking Sue, her nurse, a question--about whether a medicine |
|
has a soporific effect. Sue replies, "I don't know about that |
|
but it makes you sleepy." Then Vivian somewhat condescendingly |
|
reveals to her that "soporific" means that it makes a person |
|
sleepy and laughs at her. Sue obligingly joins in the laughter |
|
but, especially because Sue is African-American (and even if she |
|
hadn't been), the exchange comes perilously close to portraying |
|
Vivian as limited by the sort of elitism that has given |
|
academics and some intellectuals in general a very bad name. |
|
However, there are still good reasons for seeing this movie. If |
|
a viewer has been vague about what those "DNR" orders mean--the |
|
DNR order a person is asked to choose or not choose when filling |
|
out end-of-life care documents, this movie should clear the |
|
question up, at least somewhat. |
|
Some of the scenes in this film will surely make people wonder |
|
about the advisability of having as much medical care as we now |
|
have at our disposal. |
|
Just because it is possible to keep someone alive by using |
|
extraordinary life-saving measures doesn't mean that we should |
|
always do that. The movie makes the point that doctors often |
|
believe firmly in preserving life at all costs but it argues |
|
persuasively in favor of sometimes letting nature take its |
|
course. |
|
***************************************************** |
