Wit

Released 2001
Stars Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Atkins, Audra McDonald, Jonathan M. Woodward, Harold Pinter
Directed by Mike Nichols

"You have cancer." Wit opens with this statement and starts us down a harrowing journey of ovarian cancer. Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) is a highly respected professor of 17th century poetry, and she's in stage 4 of ovarian cancer. She tells us "there is no stage 5." This is a movie about an intelligent woman, who decides to spend her remaining months as a guinea pig at a research hospital. Being an academic herself, she appreciates the pursuit of knowledge and hands her body to the slightly ghoulish Dr. Kelekian (Christopher Lloyd). Kelekian is a cancer researcher, who's a bit too excited in the opening scene to have another body to experiment on. He senses strength in Vivian and ominously recommends she take the full doses of his experimental chemotherapy drugs. It will be difficult, he says, but it must be done.

Summary by Bill Alward

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