To say it �stars� Emma Thompson may give the wrong impression� moreover it �features� her. There�s nothing starry at all about her commanding role here as a university scholar brought down a washing line�s worth of pegs once she gets cancer and is hospitalized. And that�s where the bulk of this movie is played from� and save from a couple of doctors and nurses that intermittently inter-act, �Wit� is basically 90 long and painful minutes of Emma�s character talking to the camera with intellectual bedside manner � even if she does barf her brains out in the sick process.
Wit�s told in a �Talking Heads� kind of way� and not. Because Alan Bennett�s dull monologues have nothing much to say in comparison to the thoughtful and poetic narrative herein as she comes round to facing the fact that life and death shouldn�t be such polarized commodities. Instead, the difference between both states should be seen simply as �a pause.�
Mmm� if you want it deep and meaningful, try the wisdom of �Wit.� There is very little of it in the movie itself, although she does remain pointedly positive until the touching yet anti-sentimental penultimate scene in which she dies, as her former scholar ironically visits her on her deathbed to read not John Dunne�s poetry but a kiddies story.
The very final scene cleverly makes the doctors and nurses rallying round her out to be both bastards and bitches, and yet saints at the same time given a severe lack of communication provoking a doctor - obsessed with trying to prolong life as long as possible - to try resuscitate, as the nurse shouts at him to stop. Because she knows and he doesn�t that the lady doesn�t want to live any longer or to suffer anymore.
To be honest this film alone could change your outlook on life. It is no fun. And there in it being no fun at all is its courageous, unique and bizarrely inspirational power. (STEVE RUDD)