The Doctor
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Movie Reviews of The Doctor
Movie Review: A dose of your own medicine
Summary: 5 Stars
After getting over the initial shock of seeing half the cast of Chicago Hope (when it was still a good show...and not the pale imitation of itself that it later became: Alan Arkin, Mandy Patinkin, Christine Lahti), this movie evolves into a fine, quiet, character driven drama. There are no great heroics, apart from June (Elizabeth Perkins), and even those are real, not manipulative, cliched, corny or obvious.This is a movie that works to develop its characters and plot simultaneously and without artifice or obvious (groanable/cringe inducing) plot devices. None of them are in anwyay what you would call 'extreme' or cliched. They are just very normal people placed is a very stressful situation- the doctor being diagnosed with a growth in his throat and the changes in many lives this growth causes. The changes are both good, bad and 'educational' for most of them. The subplot- hospitals, statistics, malpractice cases, protecting each other- is subdued, never moralized or sermonized on but explored in a way whereby you can make your own judgements, based on some realistics situations (imagine a situation where somebody's life was worth less than $1000). The cast compliment each other and really connect. This movie is quite subtle at times and doesn't use in your face methods to make a point.
This is a movie then that is honest, beautifully made, accessible and at times really funny, and at times really raw and saddening. It isn't an episode of ER. So if you're looking for high medical drama look elsewhere. But if you're looking for real multi-layered human drama then look here. Honesty is the key word and theme in the movie (which if you watch it you'll understand what I mean). Honesty to oneself, others and just to the concept in general. And how too, sometimes we find spiritual and psychological 'healing' in the midst of the greatest physical peril.
The DVD contains no special features, only the movie, scene selection and set-up. Though it was made in 1990, it doesn't look too dated (apart from the cell-phones).
I have to admit watching this movie, I looked at the clock on the DVD player and actually hoped it wouldn't end. How many movies can you say that about?
I think the best moment in the story is when the doctor reads the story June gave him. I think there is a lesson in that that is relevant to all of us. Hopefully you'll get the opportunity to see what I mean by watching this movie.
SO in all, a brilliant, engrossing, poignant and real human drama built around believeable characters doing normal things and suffering typical tragedies that are enormous in our own lives. These are people we can understand and relate to, not the superficial and stereotypical larger-than-life, weirder-than-fiction characters designed to play with our minds and strum on our heartstrings. These people do touch your heart and mind for the right reasons...And maybe, if only for a moment, it causes you to question and reassess how you deal with others and the face you present the world, then maybe it has helped heal you a little bit too...If you need it, as most of us do.
Movie Review: THE MOVIE THAT KILLED M.A.S.H.
Summary: 5 Stars
The Doctor was another of those excellent, well-made 1990-91 releases pre-empted by laser-guided bombs and missiles of the 1990 Gulf War and forced into the video occult. But that's not stopped it from a second chance via DVD where it may get well-deserved recognition and revenues for each actor and crew's excellent contributions.The cast drove home messages that health care professionals need take a good look at "because one day you'll be sick to" ... So "physician, heal thyself" and thereby prepare to heal others all the way down to your bedside manners. The Word is eventually sent via Jack McKee and partner whose cavalier professionalism ("Get in, cut it out and couldn't care less!") is callously unsuited to genuine warmth patients need communicated to them. And then there's the insurance companies who, like them, run on "stats" and "the bottom line" to coldly determine who lives and dies on the medical production line.
You don't know what it's like until you hear those 3 words "You've got cancer"; they'll floor you -especially if you're a physician who knows the realities of catastrophic illness. So "a taste of my own medicine" (subtitle to book movie is based on) engages McKee when he's told that. I've walked hospital hallways like McKee on the way to radiation therapy and sat with the terminally ill, knowing I'd likely survive (Or would I?) and that others were terminal, and encountered my own death watch. The disingenuous reassurance McKee gave others is sheer hypocrisy and his facetious talk of golf antagonizes "the herd," whom he'd felt beneath his ivory tower profession and HIS herd of incompetents. But now, his relation with a dying patient, whom he actually befriends, turns him inward and he admits his and the profession's shortcomings - then he falls out of love with himself - all too late to save her but soon enough to save himself and his family from the same callousness engulfing all but a few.
It sends a strong message to those who profit from medicine at the deadliest expense to others whom it's supposed to save! My only complaint is that Amazon.com hasn't mailed me my DVD of it yet. How long will it take?
Movie Review: A personal experience/ A must see movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently had a chance to see the Doctor again, albeit with different eyes. The basic story line regards a cardiovascular surgeon, technically brillant but bereft of human touch. Indeed, initially, he seems somewhat proud of his aloof stance, almost trying to make it into an advantage. He relates to his patients and residents as I have seen many physicians do. Truthfully, the more awful the diagnosis, the more at arms length many physicians hold the situation. Physicians routinely mention that a patient might die, but it's rarely really true and gets mentioned as a matter of fact. When death is really a possibility, it is much harder to say that you might die. Dr McKee comes face to face with this when he becomes the patient, diagnosed with a malignant laryngeal tumor he faces the rigors of radiation treatment and when this fails surgery. He finds that the standoffish posture he had always adopted no longer worked, and the impersonal surgeon he has no longer can do all the things he needs done, both surgically and emotionally.
I had to come face to face with some of these issues when I had to have heart surgery. Truthfully, the hospitals involved did treat me with some preference, but the fears and risks were the same. I learned first hand about the reticence of surgeons to talk about a real risk of death. My surgeon left a blank consent for me to sign. I dutifully filled out the consent including risks and benefits, like a good resident. I missed the chance to look him in the eye and tell him that I trusted him with my life, all the while realizing that it would have made him uncomfortable.... it always makes me uncomfortable. See, while we all realize that what we do carries significant risks, surgeons in the US are very well trained and do very good work. We all tend to assume that things will go very well; and they so often do that we tend to forget that they might not. We become uncomfortable when we realize that just those things are what patients are focused on, just those chances that things might not go well.
Everybody needs the human touch. Even when they seem not to want it.
See the movie. There are times that it's uncomfortable, but that's how it is sometimes, isn't it?
Movie Review: One of my favorite films
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Doctor" is one of my favorite films. I have seen it maybe 10 times (on VHS) and know much of it by heart. There is nothing artificial about this film. It is a human story about real people, well directed and edited, and with sincere, fleshed-out performances from everyone in the cast.
At the opening we see the successful heart surgeon Dr. Jack McKee, quite full of himself, performing another major operation while "Let's Get Drunk and Screw" plays in the background. We see him as he makes his rounds, failing in his attempts to interact on a human level with his patients, substituting crude attempts at humor for genuine compassion. We see him failing at home as well, as his professional life alienates him from his wife and son. All this begins to change when a seemingly minor throat irritation is diagnosed as laryngeal cancer. Then he learns what it is like to be on the other side of the medical profession, and it changes his life.
William Hurt, a fine but perhaps somewhat limited actor, is perfect as Jack McKee, and he is wonderfully supported by Christine Lahti, who plays his wife, and Elizabeth Perkins, who gives an amazing performance as June, a young woman with a grade 4 brain tumor who has a powerful impact on Hurt's character. June and Jack share a scene in the desert at sundown that gives me a lump in the throat every time.
Also worth mentioning are Wendy Crewson, who plays a rather nasty ENT surgeon who gives Jack a dose of his own medicine (so to speak), and Adam Arkin as Dr. Eli Blumfield, "the Rabbi", who has often been the butt of Jack's humor around the hospital, because he talks to his patients while they are anesthetized.
The Doctor is a film that illustrates the importance of treating people as human beings and not as objects or numbers on a chart. Highly recommended! (I've pre-ordered the DVD too.)
Movie Review: A movie for every doctor and nurse to see
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a good movie for several reasons. It was entertaining and it well paced, not to fast to catch all the nuances but not poking along either. It had redeeming value with several lessons, i.e,. developing better attitudes toward patients, to spend more time with family, be more serious about the preciousness of life. I was glad to see William Hurt in a much better character than in Tuck Everlasting. He did an excellent job in transition of character. I thought it was well balanced in that the movie was not 'doctor or hospital bashing' but showing up the coldness and frivilous attitudes sometimes shown toward patients. I can appreciate this having worked in a medical center for 9 years and having been a patient for major surgery myself but in my case having several sweethearts for nurses (except for one). Some of us have also had doctor like Leslie Abbot: "Drop your pants so I can check your prostate!" June Ellis played by Elizabeth Perkins was the heart of the story. It was her character that brought about the change in a doctor's heart. Recommended for everyone but especially for health care workers. Review was of a DVD.