Good Movies You Wish You Never Saw
English Surgeon
Has this ever happened to you?
I saw a good -- no, a very good -- movie the other day that I wish I never saw. It's called THE ENGLISH SURGEON, and it's about a brain surgeon who does pro bono work (do they use that term in the medical profession) in Ukraine.
There's a scene in this film that I found so horrifying that it depressed me -- hung over me like a cloud -- for a full day -- and I still haven't shaken it. I'd love to expunge it from my memory.
The film is a documentary, so it's all real: A beautiful young woman -- 23 years old -- goes to the surgeon with her head scans. She thinks she has been suffering spells due to an insect bite. But the doctor takes one look at the X-rays and tells the other physician, a Ukrainian doctor, that the woman has a malignant brain tumor, that her condition is inoperable, that she will be dead within five years at the absolute most -- and that she will be blind before then.
He is speaking in English, so the woman has no idea what he's saying. The camera goes to her as she tries to read their faces. Meanwhile the men talk about what they should tell her. They decide not to tell her the severity of her condition, reasoning that no one, after all, could handle news that horrible, especially at that young age.
Every time I think about that scene I get a knot in my chest, picturing that young woman's face as she tries to read the grim facial expressions on these doctors. What an absolute horror.
But I guess that makes the movie effective, right? I'm trying to think: Are there any other very good movies that I wish I'd never seen, or has it taken 50 years to finally bump into one?
| August 12 2009 at 09:05 AM
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