Wit
DVD released 2002
Running time:98 minutes
Seemed like: 80 minutes
********** out of 11 stars

Emma Thompson shines again. This HBO movie revolves around Thompson as a scholar dying from cancer. Her delivery pulls in the audience with flair, humor, emotion, and...wit. Amie warned me that it was a chick flick. Instead, this was more of an intellectual exercise into metaphysical matters.

It's also a refreshing and distressing look at hospital life. The agendas and protocols that strip dignity from patients are startling. Clearly, the playwright who wrote the original play has experienced it herself. Emma and director Mike Nichols' wonderful screenplay transfers this sentiment to the screen.

As for Mike Nichols, director and co-screenplay writer, he breaks a lot of rules - the fourth wall, the time-space continuum, and keeping actors in character. The flashback juxtapositions - putting a chemo induce bald Emma into her college professor's office, putting her father from childhood into her hospital room - enhances the whole metaphysical dialog. Who ever thought John Donne would play a prominent role in an HBO flick?

Be prepared for uncomfortable scenes of nausea, pain, and death. They aren't exploitative, rather they complement the underlying themes.

Get this DVD. It's entertaining, mind expanding, thought provoking, and well executed.