Product Description

Based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson WIT features the Academy Award winning actress Emma Thompson in a movie directed by Academy award winning director Mike Nichols. Vivian Bearing is an English professor with a biting wit that educates but also alienates her students. With her teaching and life both rigidly under control Vivian would never let down her defenses until the day comes when they are taken don for her. Diagnosed with a devastating illness Vivian agrees to undergo a series of procedures that are brutal extensive and experimental. For eight months her life must take an uncharted course. No longer a teacher but a subject for others to study. Vivian Bearing is about to discover a fine line between life and death that can only be walked with wit.Running Time: 99 min.System Requirements: Running Time 99 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG-13 UPC: 026359178122

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4982 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2001-09-11
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 99 minutes

Features

• Based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, WIT features the Academy Award winning actress Emma Thompson in a movie directed by Academy award winning director Mike Nichols. Vivian Bearing is an English professor with a biting wit that educates but also alienates her students. With her teaching and life both rigidly under control, Vivian would never let down her defenses, until

Amazon.com
Deservedly hailed as one of the best films of 2001, Wit makes it clear why top-ranking talents seek refuge in the quality programming of HBO. Unhindered by box-office pressures, director Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson turn the most unglamorous topic--the physical and psychological ravages of cancer--into an exquisite contemplation of life, learning, and tenacious, richly expressed humanity. In adapting Margaret Edson's compassionate, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Nichols and Thompson open up the one-room setting with a superb supporting cast. But their focus remains on the hospital experience of Vivian (Thompson), a fiercely demanding professor of English literature whose academic specialty--the metaphysical poetry of John Donne--is the armor she wears against the cruel indignities of her cancer treatment. While losing all that she held dear, she reassesses her life as an aloof intellectual, and Wit illuminates her bracingly eloquent and deeply moving struggle for dignity, meaning, and peace at life's ultimate crossroads. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH...
This brilliant adaptation of Margaret Edison's Pulitzer Prize winning play is simply superb. Beautifully directed by Mike Nichols, it is peppered with superlative performances by its cast. It is almost hard to believe that this profoundly moving and poignant film was released for HBO, rather than as a major box office, big screen release.

Tautly written, this remarkable film focuses on an intense and brilliant professor of English, forty-eight year old Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson), whose academic focus has been metaphysical poetry. She has just been diagnosed by a noted oncologist, Dr. Kelikian (Christopher Lloyd), as having stage four ovarian cancer. She agrees to undergo an eight month long clinical trial to fight this illness, which at the juncture of its discovery is, invariably, terminal. This course of experimental treatment is Professor Bearing's only hope, as she realizes that there is no stage five.

As she undergoes agonizing medical procedures which, it is hoped, may save her life, Professor Bearing muses on a number of life issues in the form of droll monologues. It is these reflections on her life and her illness that drive home to the viewer her humanity, as she struggles to reconcile the abstract with reality. An aloof, spare woman, with a penchant for being a demanding and exacting teacher, Professor Bearing is now trying to hang on to her humanity and dignity, as she is reduced to being a mere lump of flesh.

Made to suffer the indignities imposed by an experimental medical treatment that is brutally aggressive and by the ravages of an illness that is relentless, Professor Bearing keeps a stiff upper lip throughout, never letting down her guard, until the end draws near. During her medical odyssey, she is buoyed by the ministrations of her compassionate, primary care nurse, Susie (Audra McDonald), who seems to be the only member of the medical staff interested in her as a person, rather than as just another cog in the world of medical research. Susie is a perfect foil to the ambitious medical treatment fostered by a callow, though brilliant, young doctor, Jason Posner (Jonathan M. Woodward).

The most singular scene in this film, however, occurs near its end. It is the scene in which Professor Bearing's mentor, Professor E.M. Ashford (Eileen Atkins), visits her one time protege at the hospital. Heartrending, poignant, and infinitely beautiful, it is a scene so richly drawn that it that will haunt the viewer long after the film is over.

Ms. Thompson gives a consummate, beautifully nuanced performance, as does Eileen Atkins. Audra McDonald gives a tender performance, and Christopher Lloyd and Jonathan M. Woodward are, likewise, excellent in their respective roles. Harold Pinter does a wonderful, though brief, turn as Professor Bearing's father. All in all, this is a deftly directed, outstanding film with award caliber performances by the entire cast. Bravo!

Undying Dignity.
I just tried to write a review of this just re-watched film, from the Pulitzer Prize winning play, and I got all tangled up. So, I'm not going to go into "the story." Just watch this brilliant, moving film about the regimented, respected but feared English professor, whose world is taken from her, when she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Narrated throughout by her character, the brilliant Emma Thompson takes us through her progressive deterioration and loss of control amidst the sometimes indifference of the medical profession. Audra McDonald is wonderful also as the nurse, Susie, who, though a total professional, is not only the voice of compassion, but the keeper of Thompsons "Professor Barrie's" dignity, when she can no longer defend it for herself. She is a perfect contrast to the often all to real portrayal of the fresh-faced new doctor, played by Jonathan Woodward, who effectively conveys the preoccupation with stats, data, etc...in his eagerness to "analyze", forgetting there's a human being in that bed to which the stat chart is attached. The scene near the end, where Thompson/Barrie is visited by her grand-motherly former professor, who proceeds to cradle her in her hospital bed and tenderly read a childrens story to her, and bids her good bye, is one of the most moving scenes I've ever experienced. It is not an easy film to watch. Having just lost my life-long friend, who died at 47, in hospice, it was especially poignant. But, if you watch one film, watch "Wit." It is beyond being labeled as mere entertainment, and, though the subject matter is in itself depressing, the film is not. It is one of those increasingly very, very rare films that will greatly move you. And, though you pretty much know from the first words spoken in the film where it is headed, it is ultimatley life affirming, and very touching in its conveyance of the dignity of the human spirit. Easily one of the most intelligent, moving, beautiful movies I've ever seen. Watch it.

Prepare to cry, a serious movie about a serious topic
Emma Thompson is incredible, in a riveting performance about a woman professor who prides herself on her perseverance and steadfastness, dealing with not only a serious case of cancer but the de-personalization associated with its treatment.

This movie is not for those who want light entertainment. It is a serious movie that may lead you to think more closely on how you live your life and how much consideration you have for others in it.

Emma Thompson plays Dr. Vivian Bearing a staunch English professor specializing in a 17th century poet, Donne, most well known for his poems on death and the afterlife, or lack thereof.

Ironically, Dr. Bearing though literate to the greatest degree on this most difficult of authors, has never really absorbed in a human sense the material she has spent her life researching. It was all abstract. In this sense she has been very "abstract" in dealing with the people around her as well.

Initially in dealing with the disease, Dr. Bearing has attempted to maintain this abstract distance with her own disease, refusing to yield to the potential reality of its outcome. Through discussions with a former student who is now one of the doctors treating her, she comes to judge her own actions by observing those around her.

Not wanting to give the movie away, I can only say, it is a hard movie not to cry throughout. Anyone who has seen a family member go through cancer treatment will recognize some of the buzzwords and much of the inadvertant rudeness of the medical staff. This is not meant as a complaint. I can see how this happens. The staff may have to; as a matter of self-preservation, keep a distance to continue to do this work day-to-day. For the patient though, this is as personal as it gets.

In one scene, Emma Thompson as Dr. Bearing has a discussion with her former student where he refers to patients as a means to an end for his research, not considering he is also refering to the very patient he is now treating. Her character is content to keep this abstraction, but you as the viewer are well aware of the biting coldness of this discussion. Magnificent writing, heartless reality. Numbing emotionally.

Great movie, it is emotionally wrenching to watch however.