Review of Wit (2001) by Pete L — 29 Jan 2010

Extraordinarily touching. Based on Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Emma Thompson beautifully adapted the screenplay under the superb direction of Mike Nichols about an intellectual but emotionally cold professor, Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson), undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

This is an honest, sometimes painful, exploration of the physical and psychological effects of cancer told with humor and, perhaps most astonishingly, without a trace of sentimentality. It is also one of the few movies to explore the isolation human beings experience when facing death.

Vivian Bearing is an unmarried professor specializing in the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. While in her 40s, she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. We see the stages of treatment Vivian goes through and the filmmakers do an excellent job of conveying the impersonal, often distant, manner in which patients are subjected to their physicians.

These treatments are contrasted with flashbacks of Vivian as a professor acting cold toward her students. What makes the contrast so striking is how understated it is. Nichols incorporates the use of direct to camera addresses by Vivian during her hospitalization that is simple and poignant.

The viewer isn't spared from having to watch Vivian's physical deterioration and Thompson is simply fearless in expressing Vivian's physical and emotional state of mind. Vivian sees the humor in the inevitability of her situation enabling the movie to achieve a level of grace.

This may be the best movie Mike Nichols has done. With Audra McDonald as a nurse who offers Vivian compassion, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Harold Pinter, Jonathan M Woodard. Produced by HBO.