Wit (2001)

(On DVD, October 2008) There’s nothing amusing about seeing someone die for an hour and a half, but Emma Thompson manages to make the whole experience uplifting during this adaptation of a play about a scholar slowly dying of cancer. Her flights of fancy as death closes in may not rank as uplifting, but they do credibly tackle the formidable waste that death can be, especially when her own experience of the process clashes so dramatically with the doctors who see her as nothing more than another patient on which to perform the experiments that will prove them right. Not bad as far as tearjerkers go, but stay far away if you’re not in the mood to contemplate slow and futile death. The DVD doesn’t contain any other material of note than the film.