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I rarely see this one mentioned much and I haven't seen it appear on any of those "greatest film lists." Based on a play by Margaret Edson Wit is directed by Mike Nichols who has a decently long resume and seems to be most well-known in Hollywood for his 1960s films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) plays such a fully fleshed out role that at times you'd swear you were reading an actual autobiography with someone bearing their soul in front of the camera. This is probably accentuated by consistently breaking the fourth wall. It's quite an emotional ride and if you're like me and have dealt with cancer issues with those close to you it can be an even tougher watch. If you haven't this will provide a foray. Reading through reviews definitely corroborates this. It's hard to see a strong-willed person succumb and slowly lose freedom, independence and gain only suffering. So why a tough and sad selection? It brings out a few concepts I haven't seen dealt with competently before. First, when I think about hospitals on film or TV they never seem to fully grasp the setting and the gravity. Here the hospital feels like an actual prison with no escape with the only way out being temporarily hallucination. The hallucinatory scenes play out memorably as Vivian sometimes appears in flashbacks in her present condition and characters long gone are transported to the present. Merging the past and present into some kind of distorted fever dream. Second, this film touches on the disturbing concept that doctors can be more focused on research than on the patient. Prestige, careerism at the cost of turning a patient into an anatomized guinea pig. Lines like "She's tough, full dose!" illustrate this. Some of the cast: Audra McDonald - The compassionate and understanding nurse. Christopher Lloyd - The knowledgeable and stern head doctor. Jonathan M. Woodward - The new inexperienced doctor. It's on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0PPvYlGqL8 The Complete Movie of the Month Listing: 1776 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 24 Hour Party People | 8 1/2 | The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension | Aguirre: The Wrath of God | All That Jazz | American Movie | Baraka | The Battle of Algiers | Being There | Beyond the Valley of the Dolls | Bicycle Thief | Black Hawk Down | Blade | Branded to Kill | The Brave Little Toaster | Breaking Away | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Bullet in the Head | Charade | Chitty Chitty Bang Bang | The Conversation | The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover | Day For Night | The Court Jester | Death Race 2000 | Dead Man | Darkman | Detour | Devils on the Doorstep | Double Indemnity | Downfall | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | El Topo | Falling Down | A Face In The Crowd | Fanny and Alexander | Fat City | Funny Bones | Galaxy Quest | Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai | Glengarry Glen Ross | Gremlins 2: The New Batch | Horor of Dracula | La Haine | The Ice Storm | The Intruder | It's a Wonderful Life | Judgement at Nuremberg | Jumanji | The King of Comedy | Last Train From Gun Hill | The Leopard | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | Little Shop of Horrors | Living in Oblivion | The Long Goodbye | Love & Death | M | Masculin Féminin | Man on Fire | The Man Who Would Be King | Modern Times | Mousehunt | Mulholland Drive | My Best Friend's Wedding | My Darling Clementine | My Own Private Idaho | Naked | Outland | The Panic in Needle Park | Peeping Tom | Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Play Time | The Proposition | Punishment Park | The Pusher Trilogy | Rififi/Rashômon | The Ref | Rock 'n' Roll High School | Ronin | The Rules of the Game | Safe | Schizopolis | Son of Frankenstein | The Squid and the Whale | The Super Inframan | Sunset Boulevard | Surviving The Game | The Sweet Hereafter | The Third Man | Titicut Follies | Vampyr | The Vanishing | Videodrome | The Wild Bunch | Wit | Withnail & I | The Young Girls of Rochefort | Zardoz Zogo fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jul 5, 2014 |
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Jul 5, 2014 07:00
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Discount Viscount posted:Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen any of Christopher Lloyd's dramatic work outside of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest unless Judge Doom counts, so looking forward to him in it. Some of his acting resume: My Favorite Martian, Camp Nowhere, Angels in the Outfield, The Addams Family, Addams Family Values, Dennis the Menace, Suburban Commando, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III. These examples should do a 180° on the somberness of Wit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As1-dEejTUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gowl-HApos You'd start to wonder if he ever had a sane role before. The two most subdued I know of are Clue and Eight Men Out. Discount Viscount posted:It's probably overlooked despite the pedigree because it was a TV (HBO) movie, and those tend to fall through the cracks relatively often, even with things like Roots and Brian's Song widely remembered and highly regarded. Yea, I've thought the same thing.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:00
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Discount Viscount posted:An interesting article which makes a nice companion to this film is Barbara Ehrenreich's "Welcome to Cancerland," from Harper's in 2001 and which I had to read for my basic college writing class a year or so later. It's a critique of the culture surrounding breast cancer and "awareness" and the infantilization of female patients, based on her own experiences, and in some respects could be a refutation of some of what's presented in Wit. I had a long post typed out and somehow I must've done a ctrl+w to it on accident.  I read through that article and agreed with some of it. Barbara has many complaints (a lot on corporations co-opting cancer for profit, turning cancer into a marketing scheme, femininity vs. feminism). It kind of concerns US cancer anthropology circa 2001. I didn't think her feelings were really incongruent with the main character of Wit (when they focused on the same topics). One of the issues that many cancer patients would have with that article is the concept of Cancerland itself. She notes how people respond differently to a diagnosis and how those who are overly pessimistic are met with derision. I'd say that's generally true if one was going to a support group. The article is primarily based on breast cancer and she frequently laments the perils and pitfalls of having it but there's a lot of cancer patients with less enviable incarnations of the disease. People get diagnosed with a cancer with a 95% long-term survival rate while others get ovarian/pancreatic. These people are sometimes treated like they're in the same boat. I don't think awareness and openness are bad things. It's still taboo to talk about certain cancers out in the open in certain circumstances. In the US I'd say a lot are particularly uncomfortable talking about gynecological/prostate cancers. Years ago gynecological cancers would be called "stomach cancer" just because people didn't want to talk about explicit female body parts. I've been told that pre-Betty Ford public mastectomy even talking about a lot of cancers in public was not very common. Nowadays things are a lot more open and most well-knowns will discuss things even if it's embarrassing (Michael Douglas contraction of HPV). Certain cancers are still as lethal as ever if developed but our knowledge of genetics seems to be growing. I believe preventative mastectomies are becoming more common (Angelina Jolie being a prominent recent example) and also more are having radical hysterectomies/salpingo-oophorectomies when their family history says they have a good shot of contraction if those organs aren't completely removed. This seems to be the short-term solution. Finally, I didn't understand Barbara's fixation with an anti-teddy bear ideology/cancer trinkets. It's fine if she doesn't like them but it seems like she's trying to make a tenuous link between cancer goodie bags/accessories and women being victims of patriarchal doctors while men are somehow not in the same boat being beholden to the same fallible doctors. The doctor/patient relationship is one of subservience and trust. A patient has rights but can't exactly order a doctor to do whatever he/she wants. Discount Viscount posted:I say "could be" because the scene I singled out in my last post really triggered that article in my mind, even though I've not read it since that class. The whole thing where reading a children's book seems to be the comforting/right thing to do, and connecting it with her own childhood rather flirts with falling afoul of that idea. But the two may not totally run at cross purposes. I'm not certain. It does make me wonder whether the play/movie would be at all similar with the main role being male, and where it might differ. Well, if it's a male story it's different because it'd be a different kind of cancer primarily. Having a couple of guys read The Runaway Bunny would seem like an unconventional choice although I am a big fan of The Velveteen Rabbit myself. Magic Hate Ball posted:Ah, jesus, this movie wrecked me. This movie excels in this area. Zogo fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 06:32
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Magic Hate Ball posted:I almost think of Autumn Sonata, of Bergman's original idea that the daughter would "birth" the mother - having ignored them, or at least not used them, all her life, Vivian loses the parts of her that give life, and not only that, but dies as a result (and in the arms of the only mother figure we see - both parental figures are tied directly to language). I haven't seen that one yet. Seeing all the noteworthy Bergman films is like playing Whac-A-Mole. I suppose Vivian has a similar dilemma with Agnes in Cries and Whispers. The lack of pain management becomes apparent. Another that's on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8Jh-rtSQg
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Jul 23, 2014 00:22
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I noticed that http://www.listsofbests.com/ where there was a MOTM checklist seems to be permanently down. I made a checklist using that TSPDT 1,000 checklist as a template for all 108 films: CD MOTM PS all info came from IMDb as some of these have multiple titles and runtimes.
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Jul 30, 2014 02:59
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