Wit

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so ;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture[s] be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke ; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.

--John Donne

Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson), a formidable professor of English Literature and authority on the works of Donne, has metatastic stage IV ovarian cancer. As she informs us, there is no stage V. She's an academic, a researcher and thinker. She doesn't hesitate to submit to an experimental treatment that probably won't work, but that will yield valuable data for the researchers and thinkers treating her. She has no relatives. She has few friends. Her only pillar of support is her wit, defined as her "intellectual ability or her facility of thinking." (Wiktionary)

Get ready for a hard movie. I've spent little time in hospitals, submitting to one minor surgery over two decades ago. I was in at 6:00 am, done by 10:00, and out at 5:00 that evening. But those hours between regaining consciousness at 11:00 and getting picked up at 5:00 stand as some of the loneliest of my life. Vivian Bearing spends hour after hour, day after day, in the dehumanizing role of just another guinea pig in a teaching and research hospital. No one cares for her wit. No one gets her jokes. No one's intimidated or impressed by her knowledge or carriage. And studying the contemplations of a great poet is different than contemplating for onesself. I haven't spent much time in hospitals, no, but WIT put me there and led me to some contemplation of my own.

Margaret Edson, who'd worked in a hospital, wrote the Pulitzer-prize winning play upon which this production is based. Mike Nichols and Emma Thompson adapted it for the screen, with Nichols Directing and Thompson starring. They did a magnificent job of avoiding the staginess of some stage - to -screen translations, and Thompson reaffirms her standing as one of the very best actresses of her generation. I believed in Vivian Bearing from the moment I saw her. She scared me; she impressed me; she motivated me to pull my copy of Donne's collected works down off the shelf and thoughtfully peruse his Holy Sonnets. Most importantly, she touched me.

All I know about the experience of cancer treatment I know from reading Jim Beaver and watching this movie. I pray to God that if I should ever hit that unlucky lottery, my wit can get me through.