(2021)
This movie made me think about the way responsibility changes us.
When a person achieves a level of skill and competency in a field like medicine, they learn how to save a person's life. They may even learn how to do this uniquely, at a level few others can match. Their job, for the rest of their lives, is to decide what to do with this knowledge. A person changes. Her shoulders get heavy and her eyes go stone. Other parts of her life are sacrificed on the altar of this chosen ability.
Yet, if you're good enough, if you've reached the emotional maturity that this stage of life hopefully requires, what other choice is there? What other answer can you give?
Consumption is the price of genius. Anything less is an act of selfishness.
The movie itself was enjoyable – a straight-forward medical drama with, in my opinion, surprisingly great dialogue. The screenwriter knew how to drop sentences that held lots of meaning and then pull back, letting them speak for themselves rather than diving into over-explanation. A lot went unsaid, appropriate for a movie featuring a main plot that occurs in one in-fiction hour. It also had a nice interplay of past and future scenes that wove together in a satisfying way. (Don't worry about mixing up the timelines. The past is yellow, the future is blue.)
Movies like this are a great example of a solid story, done right; an enjoyable experience crafted well, even if it doesn't necessarily break any new ground. I would recommend it to anyone who's been dying to see a decent movie in theaters after the pandemic, like me.
Brevity Quest 2021