A room. A doctor. A potential experimentee.

Dr Bearing is a scholar in seventeenth-century English poetry. Dr Kelekian is an oncologist. He has bad news for Dr Bearing.

It is cancer.

The patient seems to be bearing the news as well as one can, given the threat that a disease like cancer poses. The doctor continues. There is an experimental treatment, aggressive but available, should she be willing to take it. It will be a massive contribution to the study of cancer, and of course, any questions she may have pertaining to the treatment will be readily answered beforehand. None are asked. Papers are signed in earnest, and before one has had the time to blink, she is all set for what’s to be a particularly difficult and agonising road to … well. It is, after all, her contribution to knowledge. Besides, she has always been one for the tough things.

The veneer of strength soon wears thinner. Her physical and mental fortitude are put to test from the very beginning, but it is not in my opinion so much a story of strength as it is of the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, and the passage and nature of time. A surprising turn of thought. What is it about life that makes one want to hang on to it?

Emma Thompson’s heartbreaking performance as Dr Bearing offers us an intimate experience of a life suspended between pain and death as she traipses back and forth in time. Time moves slowly for her now, and as much as she is a subject of study for the doctors, they for her. She shares her observation with you for there are no visitors. You alone are privy to her study and gradual decline. This documentation is second nature to her. You follow her from her hospital room to test labs and back. She gives you a front seat to her treatment. And oh, the treatment! The treatment is far more painful than the disease itself; it is what will finally break her spirit and her will to live; to be brought back to life if her heart was to stop. What is it about life that makes one not want to go on anymore?

Wit is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning one-act play W;t by Margaret Edson. The screenplay is by Emma Thompson and Mike Nichols, also directed by Mike Nichols. I would recommend it for Emma Thompson’s beautiful performance.