Lessons for Medicine from Cinema
This is a list of films which I used in teaching a "Medicine & Cinema" elective at UT Southwestern Medical School, with a specific focus on reflecting on medically-relevant films and what they might have to say about how the medical profession can achieve excellence.
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- DirectorMichael HanekeStarsJean-Louis TrintignantEmmanuelle RivaIsabelle HuppertGeorges and Anne are an octogenarian couple. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, also a musician, lives in Britain with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
- DirectorJean-Marc ValléeStarsMatthew McConaugheyJennifer GarnerJared LetoIn 1985 Dallas, electrician and hustler Ron Woodroof works around the system to help AIDS patients get the medication they need after he is diagnosed with the disease.
- DirectorCristi PuiuStarsDoru AnaMonica BarladeanuAlina BerzunteanuMr. Lãzãrescu, a dying old man, is shuttled from hospital to hospital by a loyal paramedic as doctors refuse to operate and no one can agree on a diagnosis.
- DirectorDavid LeanStarsOmar SharifJulie ChristieGeraldine ChaplinThe life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
- DirectorDavid LynchStarsAnthony HopkinsJohn HurtAnne BancroftA Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of kindness, intelligence and sophistication.
- DirectorTom ShadyacStarsRobin WilliamsDaniel LondonMonica PotterThe true story of a heroic man, Hunter "Patch" Adams, determined to become a medical doctor because he enjoys helping people. He ventured where no doctor had ventured before, using humour and pathos.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneYûzô KayamaTsutomu YamazakiIn 19th-century Japan, a rough-tempered yet charitable town doctor trains a young intern.
- DirectorAsghar FarhadiStarsPayman MaadiLeila HatamiSareh BayatA married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
- DirectorRichard GlatzerWash WestmorelandStarsJulianne MooreAlec BaldwinKristen StewartA linguistics professor and her family find their bonds tested when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
- DirectorJoseph SargentStarsCliff McMullenYasiin BeyLuray CooperA dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.
- DirectorDamien ChazelleStarsMiles TellerJ.K. SimmonsMelissa BenoistA promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsVictor SjöströmBibi AnderssonIngrid ThulinAfter living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence.
- DirectorMike NicholsStarsEmma ThompsonChristopher LloydEileen AtkinsA renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneTakashi ShimuraMiki SanjôA surgeon gets syphilis from a patient when he cuts himself during an operation. The doctor's life is destroyed, but unlike the patient, he doesn't destroy others along with him.
- DirectorRyan McGarryStarsDanny ChengAndrew EadsJamie EngA notorious trauma bay in an inner-city E.R. earns its keep as the 'hurt locker of medicine' as new, idealistic and adrenaline-seeking doctors train in an environment akin to a war zone. When the hospital moves to a swank new building, the rush fades and bureaucracy gridlocks the state-of-the-art facility, and the doctors are faced with the unexpected realities of life and death in a safety-net health-care system on the brink of overload.
- DirectorDonald WryeStarsTim MathesonCharles HaidMichael SacksFollow a group of interns in a large teaching hospital. When Chief Resident Jo has a breakdown, the interns are reluctantly placed under the tutelage of the senior resident, who's known as The Fatman. Like "M*A*S*H," "The Hospital," and "St. Elsewhere" (from which this story draws), this film is closer to the truth than the public wants to know.
- DirectorStephen FrearsStarsChiwetel EjioforAudrey TautouSophie OkonedoIrregular migrants Okwe and Senay work at a posh London hotel and live in constant fear of deportation. One night Okwe stumbles across evidence of a bizarre murder, setting off a series of events that could lead to disaster or freedom.
- CreatorLucy GannonHarriet DavisonTim WhitbyStarsJemma RedgraveRuth SheenDavid CalderThis lavish period drama tells the story of Eleanor Bramwell (Jemma Redgrave), a pioneering female doctor in the late nineteenth century, and the struggles she has with her friends, her colleagues and society.
- DirectorPeter MedakStarsAlan BatesJanet SuzmanPeter BowlesA couple uses extremely black comedy to survive taking care of a daughter who is nearly completely brain-dead. They take turns doing the daughter's voice and stare into the eyes of death and emotional trauma with a humor that hides their pain.
- StarsShirl ConwayZina BethuneMichael TolanThe story takes place in a large hospital and revolves around two nurses, Liz Thorpe (Shirl Conway), the older head nurse, and Gail Lucas, the naive student nurse. The two nurses were joined by doctors in 1964 and these doctors tried to help the nurses resolve moral and ethical problems.
- DirectorDavid CronenbergStarsMichael FassbenderKeira KnightleyViggo MortensenA look at how the intense relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud gives birth to psychoanalysis.
- DirectorArnaud DesplechinStarsBenicio Del ToroMathieu AmalricGina McKeeA troubled Native American veteran forms an extraordinary friendship with his maverick French psychoanalyst as they try to find a cure to his suffering.
- DirectorJulian SchnabelStarsMathieu AmalricEmmanuelle SeignerMarie-Josée CrozeThe true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn't paralyzed.
- DirectorMichael CiminoStarsWoody HarrelsonJon SedaAnne BancroftA prestigious oncologist learns a valuable lesson in humility and is forced to reexamine his relationship with medicine and his life in general when Brandon, a young patient and convicted for murder, kidnaps him at gunpoint.
- DirectorSarah PolleyStarsJulie ChristieMichael MurphyGordon PinsentA man coping with the institutionalization of his wife because of Alzheimer's disease faces an epiphany when she transfers her affections to another man, Aubrey, a wheelchair-bound mute who also is a patient at the nursing home.
- A dramatic reality series that delves deep into the lives of the people who save lives in the trauma center and emergency room in a large urban hospital.
- DirectorPeter NicksStarsSean BennettGo behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients.