Health and dis-ease

I have an ax to grind into the backs of cinema make-up professionals and directors.  I don’t require gratuitous ugliness, but some of these films are as unrealistic as the way my siblings and I were at pretending games at age five.  If we played cowboys and Indians, or World War II combat, or cops and robbers,  the person getting killed clutched the chest dramatically and fell over stone dead.  Healthy one moment, suffering two seconds, then dead.   

Therefore, this is an incomplete commentary on the portrayal of cancer in three movies.

The Calendar Girls        

Excellent.  Not only is it a great story; the cancer patient actually LOOKS and ACTS like a cancer patient.  In this case it is a husband who progresses from “normal looking” to puffy-faced to only able to sip a few drops from a child’s juice box straw.    That is the cancer with which I am acquainted.

Y Tu Mama Tambien       

(Do not read this if you are planning to see the film and don’t want it ruined for you.) 

This film is meritorious on many levels and I do recommend it.  A Latino buddy of mine went to a lecture at Harvard in which the film was touted as a disguised means of showing the extreme poverty in Mexico.  Also, it is an engaging coming of age story, conflict between the socio-economic classes story, and more.  However, there is an extremely attractive woman in her twenties who trots around in her bikini and serves as a sexual mentor for two teen boys.  One learns at the end that she has bleepin’ terminal cancer.  Oh, come on!  All bouncy, all perky and energetic, yet has reason to know she has cancer?  Bah, humbug.

 The Bucket List       plus

Alright, I am schizophrenic on this review.  The scenes in the first part of the film occurring in the hospital are pretty respectable.  The only possible improvement I could suggest would be to change the skin color of the patients to a pale-purple-brown chemo-induced yuckiness.   That is minor.  The movie did a fine job, until…the two patients learn they have no hope in hell and only three months to live.  Then, they are blessed by the fountain of healthy youth.  No problems, tons of energy, no need for naps or moving slowly, eating and drinking like 30-year-old playboys.  It is a fantasy.  In fact, the whole movie is a pleasant, light fairy tale which is a metaphor for the poem “Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May” or “carpe diem.”  So, thumbs up AND down for this flick.

Comments welcome.  I can’t remember details of Love Story and other movies which you may want to add to this list. Thanks.