The Doctor
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.70 You Save: $3.29 (33%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.69 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Doctor
Movie Review: The other end of the scalpel ...
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent acting and storyline ... the story of modern day - compassionate - medicine.Movie Review: DVD purchase
Summary: 5 Stars
I received my DVD on time and in great condition. I'm very happy with this seller.Movie Review: Doctor's conscience
Summary: 5 Stars
Every MD & health care provider should have to see this at least every 5 years.Movie Review: A good film on the importance of being actual people
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie was made from a book by a doctor who told his own story about becoming ill and learning about the medical profession and its dehumanizing qualities by becoming a patient. It caused quite a stir at the time and this movie was quite popular when it came out. William Hurt plays the successful, brilliant, but cold heart surgeon, Dr. Jack MacKee. He and his beautiful wife, Anne (played so well by Christine Lahti), live a materially comfortable but emotionally detached existence with their son, Nicky.
Dr. Jack has been ignoring a raspy throat and cough until he coughs up blood. Soon, he is diagnosed with a tumor on one of his vocal cords. He becomes the patient of Dr. Leslie Abbott who is even colder than him, she is talented but sees only problems to fix, the person exists to her only as something to bring her the illness to cure. The doctors in this film are largely all of the same stripe. They are supreme problem solvers who avoid any involvement with the people they are treating. The one exception, and an object of ridicule of the other doctors is Dr. Eli Blumfield (portrayed very nicely by Adam Arkin).
As a patient, the unhuman sterility of the hospital and its policies become clear to Dr. Jack as he is treated as a container for the problem the doctors are to fix. One of the things all patients do is wait, and then wait, and then wait some more. While he is thus engaged in waiting helplessly for treatment he meets another patient, June Ellis (heroically played by Elizabeth Perkins). She is dying of a grade IV glioblastoma (a type of brain tumor). One of her complaints is that they should have found her tumor sooner. At first, Dr. Jack does the "team" thing by refusing to admit that they should have and giving her false hope with a lie about a patient in a similar condition who is now a grandfather.
As an aside, one of my family members died of a grade IV glioblastoma. It doesn't matter when they diagnose the patient. The treatments they offer are all about stalling death, not preventing it. In nearly all cases, the patient will die within a year. June's lack of functional deficit and lack of a surgical scar on her scalp are all dramatic license to help keep June completely sympathetic (gruesome is not sympathetic). Her head is shaved, but radiation treatment does not leave the scalp with a neatly shaved look. The hair falls out unevenly, and the high does of radiation often leaves the skin reddened and raw from being burned. There is no reason to hold back on the radiation dose, since it was all a Hail Mary kind of treatment. I hope the treatments have gotten better since 1999 and that someday real hope can be offered those afflicted with this miserable condition. The one great lesson life offers during this time is how little is needed to find life precious. We spend so much time putting conditions on our happiness that we cheat ourselves of so much. This kind of illness takes away the ability to even have good days and eventually even good hours. Good moments become wonderful and intensely full of life. Something as simple as a chicken salad sandwich and lemon poppyseed cake with a can of Vernors can provide an exquisitely memorable moment. The movie captures this to a degree, but not as powerfully as it can happen in real life.
Anyway, June becomes the means to Dr. Jack finding his humanity and becoming a better person and doctor. It is nice that the screenplay has Dr. Jack finding his way in a very uneven and often frustrating way. The movie ends with a kind of dramatic gag that rewards the audience for following an often grim story all the way through.
Good movie, good notes for all people - including medical professionals - to take about the importance of treating those with whom we interact on a daily basis as real people rather than as an impersonal piece of business.
Movie Review: I Actually Give a 4.5 Star
Summary: 4 Stars
A doctor experiences a shift of his role from an arrogant doctor to a helpless patient due to his unexpected illness, and his psychology is expressed very well in the form of movie.
The view expressed in this film is a serious problem in the United States as medical practice is run as a business not as an act of helping humans. A drastic change must be made in order to improve the medical community, and the current situation is far from ideal.
I cerebrate the courage for this movie to impose the idea and hope it had helped to some extent to improve the medical system.