From the HBO site...
Wit
This HBO Films presentation chronicles the personal awakening of a longtime literary scholar (two-time Oscar-winner Emma Thompson), who learns the importance of simple human kindness when faced with the most daunting of crises: a diagnosis of advanced cancer.
The film's principal character is Vivian Bearing, Ph.D. (Thompson), a 48-year-old professor specializing in the forbidding work of 17th Century metaphysical poet John Donne. With biting humor and wit, Vivian approaches her illness as she would one of Donne's sonnets, aggressively probing and intensely rational.
However, over the course of eight months of high-dose chemotherapy, and several flashbacks to her childhood and teaching years, Vivian sees many of the smug assumptions about her life and legacy explode in the face of her growing dependency on others.
Although it is adapted (by Nichols and Thompson) from an exceptional play, the power and poignancy of HBO's Wit comes from a tour-de-force performance by Thompson, as well as brilliantly conceived direction from Nichols, who uses his cinematic skills to make the film a far more intimate experience than was possible on stage.
Directed by fellow Oscar-winner Mike Nichols, and adapted from Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the film co-stars Audra McDonald, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Jonathan M. Woodward and Harold Pinter.
Watch it and make sure the Kleenex is handy... |
