Summary:

This video depicts Robert Coles, noted author, psychiatrist, documentator and humanist, teaching his popular undergraduate course, "The Literature of Social Reflection," at Harvard University in 1990. The film begins with a bell tolling in a steeple and students entering the lecture hall. Excerpts from his lectures are presented in 4 parts: I: Ruby; II: Seeing--The Paintings of Edward Hopper and The Stories of Raymond Carver; III: Praying; and IV: Potato Chips and Tolstoy.

Some additional documentary clips are shown, such as footage of six-year-old Ruby Bridges being escorted into a previously all-white New Orleans school amidst a screaming mob during forced integration of schools. In between segments, brief interviews of Coles’ students let the viewer know that his message is getting through: it matters how you live your life--it matters a great deal.

Coles teaches with stories and these stories are riveting. In 1960, while in the Air Force and assigned to a psychiatric detail, he befriends young Ruby after he witnesses her courage in entering the school building. He comes to know her family and teacher.

Several months later, during the morning escort, Ruby stops in front of the school and says something which makes the mob even more frenzied. Coles is asked by the teacher to tell Ruby not to do that again. Upon gentle questioning, it turns out that Ruby was not talking to the mob, but to God: "Please God, try to forgive those people because they don’t know what they’re doing."

It was a prayer she said every morning, usually a couple of blocks away from the school, but that morning she had forgotten to do it earlier. Coles discusses the remarkable gift of forgiveness instilled in this brave child by her parents, who despite poverty and lack of opportunity to advance in life, were able to love and teach their children values and grace.

In Part II, Coles uses paintings by Edward Hopper, a poem by Raymond Carver ("What the Doctor Said" (annotated by Felice Aull and Irene Chen, also annotated by James Terry) and Carver short story (Cathedral) to illustrate how difficult it can be to truly communicate with and know another person. And how magical the moments are when we do.

In Part III, Coles shows some of the children’s drawings that he has collected during his documentary work. Coles delights in describing what the children said about their drawings at the time they created them. He clearly respects them and their ideas.

The last part ends with the story of the death of Coles’s mother at Massachusetts General Hospital. In her dying days she befriended an African-American woman, whose job was at the bottom of the hierarchy of the hospital: an orderly. After Coles’s mother died, it was this woman--not any doctor or nurse--who taught Coles how to take the time and be with his mother, rather than rush off as he was preparing to do. Coles asks, "Who was the doctor, the healer, the wise person?"

He notes that these twists are characteristic of many stories, such as those by Flannery O’Connor. He then concludes before a standing ovation: "Let us be good to one another, live on behalf of one another . . . . We are lucky to have these writers . . . and to have the lives that can include them."

View full annotation

Summary:

Most of the film takes place inside the body of a slob, a widower named Frank (Bill Murray). The live-action sequences trace Frank’s illness: because of his unhealthy habits, he contracts a virus, develops an extremely high fever, and almost dies. After a miraculous recovery, he decides to follow the advice of his sensible daughter, Shane, and get more exercise, eat healthy food, and so on.

The rest of the film is animated, and tells the story of the illness from inside Frank’s body, a city with its own police force (the immune system, its precincts in the lymph nodes), organized crime (microbes who have a steambath in Frank’s armpit), the media (NNN, the Nerve Network News). The town is run from Cerebellum Hall by the corrupt Mayor Phlegmming, who discourages healthy eating habits because the huge number of fat cells vote for him. Chaos threatens with the arrival of Thrax (the voice of Laurence Fishburne), a virus who, as he puts it himself, "makes ebola look like dandruff."

The heroes are Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell (who is literally blue, and voiced by the black comedian Chris Rock), and Drix, a cold capsule (voice of David Hyde Pierce). Jones has been suspended for using "unnecessary force," by making Frank throw up in public (and in fact saving his life by expelling a toxic oyster), and Drix develops an inferiority complex when he realizes that he does not cure disease, but is only "for the temporary relief of symptoms." The two team up as vigilantes and, along with the attractive Leah, another immune cell who works as the Mayor’s Aid, they defeat Thrax and save the city.

View full annotation

Summary:

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is trying to avenge the rape and murder of his wife. She was, as far as he can recall, killed by the same intruder who injured Leonard’s head, leaving him with "anterograde amnesia": he remembers everything up until the injury but no longer has short term memory. "I can’t make new memories. Everything fades."

Leonard’s single purpose now is to find and kill the person responsible for his wife’s death and his own disability. He remembers this purpose, and the steps in his progress towards it, by keeping annotated Polaroid photographs and tattooing important facts onto his body. At the end of the story--which is the beginning of the film--Leonard kills a man he believes to be the murderer, but who is probably not.

The story is narrated in reverse chronology, beginning with Leonard shooting the suspected killer, in short segments corresponding more or less to the length of Leonard’s ability to remember. These scenes are interspersed with parts of a longer scene that follows regular chronology, shot in black and white, in which Leonard sits in his motel room, talking on the telephone and telling the story of Sammy Jankis, a man he seems to remember from his earlier life as an insurance investigator.

Sammy suffered from anterograde amnesia after a car crash and Leonard dismissed his condition as psychological rather than physical, resulting in the refusal of Sammy’s insurance claim (the company doesn’t cover mental illness). Sammy’s diabetic wife, thinking that if the condition is mental it must also be voluntary, tries to get him to "snap out of it" by testing him in various ways: finally she tricks him into administering her insulin shot over and over until she dies. Sammy ends up institutionalized.

As we piece the story together, we realize that Leonard’s method for keeping track of his revenge plot is inadequate. Because the bits of information that substitute for memory can be manipulated, others are able to use him as an unwitting assassin. We also deduce that the story of Sammy Jankis may in fact be the story of Leonard Shelby, and that perhaps Leonard’s own wife was killed not by a murderer but by Leonard himself, the revenge motivation possibly planted by Teddy (possibly a cop) in order to make of Leonard a very efficient killer.

The story ends (where it begins) with Teddy’s plot turned against him by Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a mysterious woman who has revenge motives of her own. Leonard takes Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) for the killer and shoots him. Our chilling realization is that Leonard will soon forget he has achieved his objective and again begin looking for someone to kill.

View full annotation

Summary:

Anne (Sarah Polley) is 23 years old, is married with two small daughters, lives in a trailer in her mother’s yard, and works as a nightshift cleaner. She is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer and told she has no more than three months to live. She decides to tell no one that she is dying and makes a list of things to do in the time she has left.

She records birthday messages for her daughters, looks for a new wife for her husband (Scott Speedman), explores her troubled relationship with her mother (Deborah Harry), and has an affair with a man she meets in a laundromat (Mark Ruffalo). The last stages of her illness and her death are not shown; the focus is on how she chooses to live a life that has a new shape, both curtailed and illuminated by the knowledge of how soon it will end.

View full annotation

Summary:

Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) is a reckless playboy who is injured in a speedboat accident. Life-saving equipment is brought to his aid although it is needed for the brilliant but seriously ill Dr. Phillips, who dies. Merrick’s selfish clumsiness leads to yet another accident, in which the doctor’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman), is blinded.

Overcome with remorse, Merrick studies medicine, visits Helen under a false name and falls in love. He refers her for special eye examinations in Europe. She begins to love him too, but the specialists are unable to help her and when she learns of his deception, she flees. Years later, Merrick is summoned from his busy practice by Helen’s confidante and nurse (Agnes Moorehead); he arrives just in time to perform brain surgery, saving both her eyesight and her life.

View full annotation

Summary:

In the videotape, She's Finally Free . . ., Joe Cruzan and Christy Cruzan White, Nancy Cruzan's father and sister, tell the story of their eight-year struggle for the right to let Nancy die, after a January 11, 1983 car wreck left her in a persistent vegetative state. The Cruzans see their story as a means of enlightening health care professionals and the community at large about the concerns and frustrations experienced by the families of critically ill patients. After a brief pictorial overview of Nancy Cruzan's life, the remainder of the video presents a chronological series of vignettes/stories told by Christy and Joe Cruzan.

View full annotation

Summary:

Mrs. Tucker, Her Daughter Emily and Dr. Duff features Raymond Duff, M.D. as the storyteller. Dr. Duff was a pioneer in neonatology and produced many scholarly works in that field. One of his areas of research was grief and bereavement. However, his interests and this story go well beyond "grief resolution" to an exploration of the boundaries of the clinician-patient relationship.

The pseudonymous Tucker family and Dr. Duff share together a number of deaths and their aftermaths over a short period of time. In recounting the lessons learned from and privilege of being a part of the Tucker family "drama," Ray Duff reminds viewers "that although there inevitably is loss in what they encounter through their work in the health professions, there also is hope."

View full annotation

Summary:

When we meet Frankie "Starlight," (Corbin Walker) he has become, suddenly, an acclaimed writer, and the center of Ireland’s literary circle. In frequently interrupted flashbacks viewers become acquainted with the memoirs in his best-selling book. Much of this story, his story, is about Bernadette (Anne Parillaud), Frankie’s remarkable mother, her life prior to his birth, and the life that they would share until her death.

Bernadette’s story begins in France in the days before the D-Day invasion. She and her family live on the Normandy coast of occupied France where they suffer wartime abuses and atrocities imposed by Nazi soldiers. Just prior to D-Day, Bernadette and her teen-age friends discover an unusual metal object on the dunes. When the object explodes, only Bernadette survives. Shortly thereafter, and minutes before the D-Day attack, her father is brutally executed by the soldiers with all villagers, including Bernadette, bearing witness. Not surprisingly, these two traumatic events leave her damaged and scarred.

Bernadette escapes to Ireland on an American troop ship where she becomes pregnant with Frankie. The remainder of the story concerns her loving and supportive relationship with her child, a dwarf. Other characters include two of Bernadette’s lovers sensitively played by Gabriel Byrne and, later, Matt Dillon. Their relationships with her and her young son bring bizarre twists to an already unusual story. Set in France, Ireland, Texas, and back to Ireland.

View full annotation

Summary:

Ten months after being burned over 68% of his body, Dax Cowart was interviewed on videotape at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston by Dr. Robert B. White. Blind, disfigured and helpless, Dax had consistently asserted his right to refuse medical treatment, including further corrective surgery on his hands (useless, unsightly stumps) as well as the daily, excruciatingly painful baths in the Hubbard tank.

At the time of his admission to UTMB, he had become adamant that he be allowed to leave the hospital and return home to die--a certain outcome since only daily tankings would prevent overwhelming infection. Dr. White had been called in as a psychiatric consultant, and much of the twenty-nine minute documentary is a conversation between patient and psychiatrist.

Calm and coherent, Dax states his wishes clearly and presents his case compellingly. He does not "want to go through the pain"; he does not "want to go on as a blind and a crippled person"; and he does not understand or accept any physician’s "right to keep alive a patient who wants to die."

View full annotation

Summary:

Helen McNulty (Laura Dern) is a reporter. She and her photographer boyfriend, Jan, are on assignment in an unnamed Central American country when they witness militia shooting at protesters. They are both arrested/abducted.

The story picks up a year later. Helen is back in the United States, working on a story about Dr. Anna Lenke (Vanessa Redgrave), a psychiatrist who runs a clinic for survivors of torture. Dr. Lenke herself was raped and tortured at Auschwitz. Helen interviews her, and goes to stay at the clinic to work on her story. Anna recognizes at once that Helen, too, has been tortured.

Helen gradually comes to acknowledge what happened to her. The process culminates in her narrating, and our seeing in flashback, her torture and the murder of her boyfriend. Helen’s recovery is intertwined with and complicated by the story of Tomas Ramirez (Raul Julia), who also identifies himself as a survivor of torture and is at the clinic not only for therapy but because he is in hiding. Helen and Thomas become friends, then lovers, and he is instrumental in her recovery.

As a journalist, though, Helen delves into Thomas’s background and learns that he was not a victim but a perpetrator of torture. Helen turns him over to the authorities and he is arrested. Dr. Lenke’s last words about Tomas, that only once he has confessed can he again be human, rings hollowly: he has already confessed, to her and the other torture survivors at the clinic, and no court of law can present a harsher judge.

View full annotation