Passions unbridled! Doctors and nurses! Saving lives and making love, often simultaneously. Stories ripped from headlines. Damn the rules, damn the system. “Make love to me Harold. I know I’m just a surgeon and you’re a hotshot payables manager! I must have you, right here, right now!” “But we’re in the cafeteria, Sylvia…”
When it comes to drama, nothing delivers the goods so well as an outbreak, an emergency, a fatal condition, a stigma, a loss of function and eye candy actors and actresses in war (MASH), out west (Medicine Woman) or a gritty urban hospital (ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Hope).
There is something deeply satisfying about a good medical drama.
So, who does this best?
Yes, you guessed it. We have the answers. For the first time, here in the convenient framework of the number ten, are the absolute best, most satisfying medical movies—of all time!
Don’t agree? Feel free to post your favorites below.
Number 1: Something the Lord Made
Something the Lord Made is the richly satisfying story of a 34-year partnership that begins in Depression Era Nashville in 1930 when Blalock (Alan Alan Rickman) hires a young black man Thomas (Mos Def) as an assistant in his Vanderbilt University lab, expecting him to perform janitorial work. But Thomas’ remarkable manual dexterity and intellectual acumen confound Blalock’s expectations, and Thomas rapidly becomes indispensable as a research partner to Blalock in his forays into heart surgery.
The film traces the two men’s work when they move in 1941 from Vanderbilt to Johns Hopkins, an institution where the only black employees are janitors and where Thomas must enter by the back door. Together, they attack the heart problem of Tetralogy of Fallot, also known as Blue Baby Syndrome, and in so doing they open the field of heart surgery.
After Blalock’s death, Thomas continued his work at Johns Hopkins training surgeons. At the end of the film, in a formal ceremony, Hopkins recognized Thomas’ work and awarded him an honorary doctorate. A portrait of Thomas was placed on the walls of Johns Hopkins next to Blalock’s portrait, which had been hung there years earlier.
Number 2: My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown
This film received five academy award nominations and won two—Best Actor for Daniel Day Lewis and Best Supporting Actress for Brenda Fricker. My Left Foot tells the true story of Christy Brown who was born with a severe form of cerebral palsy. Except for his left foot, Christy is paralyzed. Written off as retarded and helpless, Christy nevertheless learned to write and paint using his left foot and along the way falls in love with his nurse. There is no sugarcoating in this this movie. Brown, who became a heavy drinker, is not lovable. His mother (played by Brenda Fricker) never gives up and, eventually, Christy becomes a well-known author, painter and fundraiser for cerebral palsy causes. This is terrific movie that will inspire all who are in the healing professions.
Number 3: Wit
Actually, nearly any move with Emma Thompson is worth seeing. In this drama she plays an increasingly ill victim of Stage IV ovarian cancer named Vivian Bearing. As she undergoes ever more tests and experimental treatments, she begins to realize that the doctors treating her, including a former student of hers, see her less as someone to save and more as a guinea pig for their treatments. The only person who seems to care for her as a person is Susie Monahan (Audra McDonald), one of the nurses on the staff.
Late in Vivian’s illness, the only visitor she receives in the hospital is her former graduate school professor and mentor, Evelyn Ashford (Eileen Atkins), who reads her excerpts from Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny. As she nears the end of her life, Vivian regrets her insensitivity and realizes she should have been kinder to more people. In her time of greatest need, she learns that human compassion is of more profound importance than intellectual wit.
Vivian dies at the end of the film, with her voiceover reciting “death be not proud.”
Number 4: Awakenings
Robin Williams as Oliver Sacks? Yes, and it works very, very well. Williams, playing a version of the absent minded klutzy professor and real life neuro scientist Oliver Sacks (named Malcolm Sayer in the film), takes a job at a Bronx psychiatric hospital in 1969. He is charged with the care of a group of apparently catatonic and unresponsive patients—one of whom is Robert DeNiro. Of course, we’ve seen DeNiro give interviews. Also unresponsive. Sayer tests a new drug, L-DOPA on one of his patients—as played by DeNiro. Gradually, his patients begin to emerge from their living-dead states under the influence of L-DOPA, but complications develop. Awakenings was nominated for three academy awards. Directed by Penny Marshall, the performances by Williams and DeNiro are two of their best ever and definitely Oscar worthy.
Number 5: MASH
One of the greatest medical movies ever produced, this black comedy launched the careers of Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Sally Kellerman, Tom Skerritt and Robert Duvall. Director Robert Altman’s style captured the casual, chaotic atmosphere with its constant noise, activity and gore of a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) three miles from the Korean War front lines. Altman experimented with widescreen photography, zoom lenses and overlapping sound and dialogue along with improvisational ensemble acting. These techniques were revolutionary 40 years ago (and still fresh today) and have influenced movies ever since. Nominated for five academy awards and winner of Best Screenplay, many of its lines are now part of the popular culture.
Hotlips O’Houlihan: “I wonder how a degenerated person like that could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps!”
Father Mulcahy: “He was drafted.”
Number 6: Red Beard
This 1965 film by famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa is about the relationship of a town doctor and his new trainee. The story is set in 19th century Edo (now Tokyo). A Dutch-trained young doctor, who aspires to become personal physician to the Shogun, is disappointed to find that he’s been assigned to train in a rural clinic under the autocratic “Red Beard.” Dr. Niide (aka: Red Beard) seems like a tyrannical task master, but is really a compassionate clinic director. Through working with patients at the clinic and learning to work under the rules, the young doctor begins to learn the magnitude of his patient’s suffering as well as his power to ease that suffering. The young doctor begins to regret his earlier vanity and selfishness. Through observing his mentor, Dr. Niide, the young doctor discovers what being a doctor really means—that the lives of his patients are more important than wealth or status.
Number 7: My Own Country
Directed by Mira Nair—one of the most talented directors working today—My Own Country tells the true story of an East Indian doctor who settles in Johnson City, Tennessee, and become one of the great crusaders against AIDS. This film is more than a “fish out of water” story. Dr. Verghese, who trained in infectious diseases and received his medical degree from Madras Medical College, Chennai, India, is an extraordinarily talented and courageous scientist who confronted a true plague. The film is set in 1985. AIDS is spreading from the big cities to the rural areas. Dr. Verghese takes this implacable disease on as his personal crusade. He soon has as many as 82 patients under his care. His wife, who is very pregnant, worries that he may contract the AIDS virus through contact with patients. At the same time, he is confronted with hospital administrators who are worry about the cost of all this care. Starring Marisa Tomei, this is a great and undiscovered gem of a movie.
Number 8: The Doctor
What happens when the doctor becomes the patient? This film, which is based on the book “A Taste of My Own Medicine” by real-life surgeon Ed Rosenbaum, explores that dynamic in an extraordinarily powerful way that resonates strongly with patients and physicians alike. In this movie William Hurt plays an arrogant doctor who cares little about the emotional welfare of his patients. When he discovers that he has a malignant tumor, he learns what patients endure—long lines, callous attitudes and the indignities of illness. Through his own experiences and those of his fellow cancer patients, the doctor learns to be a more caring healer. I wonder how many surgeons will see themselves in the Hurt’s character.
Number 9: The Hospital
At the time of its release, this 1971 movie received almost universal critical praise. The Hospital, which is loosely based on New York’s Lennox Hill hospital in the early ’70s, won the Academy Award for its screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. The movie stars George C. Scott as a bitter, suicidal Dr. Bock, Chief of Medicine. The movie opens with the mysterious deaths of two doctors and a nurse. Both seem to have died from staff ineptitude and extreme carelessness. Dr. Bock complains of impotence and has thoughts of suicide. Into this mess comes a new patient, a physician who has retired to Mexico. His adult daughter, the alluring Diana Rigg, brings him to the hospital for treatment. Literally in minutes, Dr. Bock and the patient’s daughter fall in lust. The enduring strength of this movie is its screenplay. Forty years on, it still snarls and bites.
Number 10: The Gifted Hands of Ben Carson
This 2009 movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. is based on the life of world renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, the movie aired on TNT. Ben Carson started out life as a child in a single parent home. His mother, who dropped out of school in the third grade, is the principal driver pushing her children to achieve in school. Despite stints in a mental institution, Carson’s mother persevered. Carson eventually goes on to medical school and rises to become a famed neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. Occasionally syrupy, this movie still documents the struggle and focus required to become a successful surgeon and leader. In Ben Carson’s story are the elements of many of the stories of great physicians.
