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Wit (2001)
Director: Mike Nichols
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
An HBO adaptation of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer-winning play in which a respected professor of 17th century poetry (Thompson) diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She decides to treat the disease as a new challenge. For once, this is a terminal illness drama which refuses to resort to mushy melodrama. The downside is that it's also unremittingly grim, full of windy sermonising about John Donne's poetry, and Thompson's asides to camera rapidly begin to grate.Author: GM
User reviews of this film
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- J.G. said...
- Posted on Jul 06 2007 15:21 This movie is surely not one for a light-hearted laugh or two. It is unremittingly a hard look at one person's journey through the trials of chemotherapy for a cancer that has metastasized into other organs. Emma Thompson, perhaps better known lately for her lighter roles, does a simply masterful job playing Vivian Bearing, the English professor who finds ultimately that it is not knowledge, but love and kindness that matter most in the end. If the viewer of this movie has any sense of compassion at all, he or she would be wise to have a box of tissues at hand for this film. In my own opinion, though, it's a "must see" for anyone.
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Cast & crew
Director: Mike Nichols
Producer: Simon Bosanquet
Cast: Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald, Jonathan M Woodward, Harold Pinter, Rebecca Laurie full cast
Duration: 99 mins
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