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Wit

4/4/2010, reviewed by Amanda Evans

It's 11:30 on the night before Resurrection Sunday and we just finished watching Wit, a movie about a bald woman dying of cancer alone in a hospital room. And yet this story impacted me so profoundly that I don't want to go to sleep for fear the impression will fade. Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) was a doctor of philosophy with a love of John Donne's poems and a deep respect for words when she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. There is no stage 5. This movie tells the story of her death. Though it is set in a stark white hospital room and Emma Thompson wears nothing but a hospital gown (and sometimes less) it is beautiful and poignant, marrying body and soul, the ridiculous with the tragic. Without trying to preach any morals or teach any lessons, it is a subtle, gentle commentary on life and death. The one is not glorified; the other is not trivialized. As Resurrection Sunday dawns soon, I will praise Jesus that "death is but a comma." And I will never be able to read The Runaway Bunny with dry eyes again.

This is one of those stories that enriches your life and leaves you looking at the world in a fresh way. As you watch (or read) each deliberately crafted scene—each word intentionally chosen, the camera angled a certain way, a particular mood set—you can feel the creator pouring his soul into your heart. For me this happened with Life is Beautiful, It's a Wonderful Life, Papa's Wife, Story of the Trapp Family Singers, and The Velveteen Rabbit. Wit surpassed them all.

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