Kat's Film Reviews: Wit

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Wit

It's very possible that I didn't understand everything there was to understand in this film. There are lots of overtones and undertones that would be difficult for your average film viewer and were doublefold difficult for me because of the amount of serious British poetry that's read onscreen. Whenever poetry is read (unless it's e e cummings, Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost) it's as if my mind shuts off and can't compute what the ears are hearing. A sad state of affairs, yes, I agree. This is not to imply that the film isn't moving, interesting, and ultimately uplifting. Emma Thompson plays a professor of 17th century poetry, specifically the John Dunne variety, who has been diagnosed with cancer. She's not a sentimental person and the film follows her course of extreme chemotherapy and how she copes with it, at first through logic and gradually with questions and doubts. At first I thought the title of the film reflected only her sense of humor, but realized as the film progressed that it encompasses all the definitions of wit -- reasoning power, mental soundness, astuteness, and "an imaginatively perceptive and articulate individual especially skilled in banter" (as defined by Merriam-Webster Online). What more perfect actor for this role than Thompson, then?

year: 2001
length: 98 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243664/combined

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