Last night at Thom Powers' Stranger Than Fiction spring season opener, director Geoffrey Smith (pictured) and his subject, Dr. Henry Marsh, were there to talk about their superb collaboration in making one of the top nonfiction films of '08, The English Surgeon. Smith reported that the evening was "brilliant, just brilliant. Packed house and the most amount of love and awe you can imagine. We will definitely be having a week in NYC at some point. John Vanco [GM of the IFC Center] wants it, he just has to find a slot, so I will keep you posted."
Smith and Marsh were also fêted at Sunday night's Cinema Eye Honors with two nominations for the film, Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and Outstanding International Feature. (Cave and Ellis will be releasing a two-CD compilation of their soundtrack music for The English Surgeon, The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James this summer.)
I was lucky enough to see the film at last year's Hot Docs in Toronto where it took the top international prize for Best Feature. Here's what I wrote after seeing it there:
The first thing I viewed was Geoffrey Smith's The English Surgeon
(the subject of this beautiful piece, the brave Dr. Henry Marsh,
pictured, and one of his patients, Marian Dolishny, pictured with his beloved cat). Winner of the Best International Feature
Documentary at Hot Docs, this film's assured storytelling craft serves
its magnificent subjects well. Emotionally and visually rich, the
film tells the story of Dr. Marsh, an esteemed neurosurgeon based in
London, his dark humor tinged with an unrelenting sense of mission and
the lusty joy of, as he describes it, "the bloodsport of brain
surgery." There is obviously a profound and deep respect between
director Smith and his subjects and they offer up their humanity in all
its raw and glorious aspects.
Henry Marsh has been going to Kiev
for over 15 years to offer what assistance he can to doctors working
within an antiquated, crumbling medical establishment, one that
ends up killing more people than it aids or saves, particularly when it
comes to brain surgery. We learn that due to negligence, by the
time most people come for evaluation, there is absolutely nothing that
Marsh and his Russian colleague, the beleaguered Dr. Igor Kurilets, for
whom Marsh is both a mentor and benefactor, can do, the scans
portending the inevitable news that these people are, indeed, living on
borrowed time. The scenes where the doctors have to sit and tell
the person sitting across from them that they only have a little while
to live are devastating--quiet, intense, hopeless. Refusing to
give false hope, the doctors must deliver the worst news possible to a
long line of people that wait outside their offices to hear their fate.
The scene where we get to witness, from start to finish, the brain surgery on the young and devout Marian is beautiful. Described as "horrible" and "gruesome" by some, I watched this scene with awe. It reminded me of the ear reconstruction scene in Manda Bala and the open heart surgery scene in All That Jazz--certainly not as stylized and operatic as those, but fascinating in its portrayal of a collaboration between doctor and patient. As Marsh says, his patients help make him "brave." Marsh feels it's essential for the success of the operation that Marian stay awake throughout the entire process (including the first drill into the skull), so Marian can communicate with his surgeons as they work to remove the massive tumor in his brain. We are privileged to sit and watch a small miracle happen before our eyes. And, odd to say, there are many laughs in this scene, as well.
Marsh is haunted by one failed case, in particular, and in the climax of the film, accompanied by Kurilets, pays a visit to the mother of a young girl he tried to save several years ago. She greets the two doctors with a houseful of relatives gathered around her for emotional support, and a table laden with food. As they share a meal (no one can really eat anything), the doctor lets her know how devastated he still is that his efforts to save her daughter, Tanya, caused more damage to the already sick little girl, violating, in his mind, medicine's most precious oath--to do no harm. I can't even think about that quietly powerful scene without welling up.
Incredibly, Smith shot this over just two weeks in the winter of '07 and manages to tell a deeply moving story of pathos and redemption, every shot illustrating with delicacy and grace (and loads of humor), a portrait of a true humanitarian. Nick Fraser, the editor of BBC Storyville and with Greg Sanderson, the executive producer of the film, says, "There are very, very few films I love quite as much as this one." I loved it, too.
For those in DC, you're in luck this week: there will be a special screening of The English Surgeon presented by SILVERDOCS this Thursday, April 2 at 7:00 p.m. with Geoffrey Smith in person at the AFI Silver Theatre. Click here for more info and to buy tickets.
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