IF Alan Rickman wasn't enough to draw me into this movie, the fact that the producers were NOT going to give us a hero movie, showing no imperfections of the real people portrayed would have made me buy it.
A Southerner myself, I know this kind of aristocratic driven Southern male was quite believable. During segregation times, people would attend church regularly, call themselves 'Christian' and make black people sit on the back of the bus....never reacting when the bus driver would get up and move the sign back, forcing blacks to rise and whites to get seats. Of course, those were the NICE whites. This movie beautifully shows that fact that some blacks did NOT meekly accept their mistreatment.
Though Vivian Thomas was not as aggressive as his brother, who sued the Nashville Board of Education to get equal pay for black school teachers, he nonetheless felt deeply the indifference the white doctors showed him. By not giving him the credit he deserved in performing this revolutionary operation on a blue baby, these doctors showed just how deeply the injustice of segregation was instilled in them. A more is some value you don't question, and the 'slightly less human' condition of black people in the South in my youth (and this time of the movie) was one of those mores.
To watch him work on the dog, closing his eyes to better feel the conjunction of the various heart arteries, I was wonderfully impressed. That doctor who was the consultant on this movie did an excellent job. The fact that even those who were complicit in the discrimination shown Vivian Thomas did not flinch from showing it in this movie impresses me no end.
For those of you not born in this time, you will find it difficult to believe but this mistreatment was not considered so during those years. The fact that Thomas lived in the slums while his colleague lived in a mansion is well illustrated. The only way he got to see his colleague honored in the Baltimore hotel was to pretend he was a lackey bringing in the suitcases. More insidious, the white surgeon portrayed by Rickman made no effort to invite him. The only indication that he had a conscience about this was his expression of 'vague regrets' when Thomas is wheeling him around in his wheelchair toward the end of his life.
A Southerner myself, I know this kind of aristocratic driven Southern male was quite believable. During segregation times, people would attend church regularly, call themselves 'Christian' and make black people sit on the back of the bus....never reacting when the bus driver would get up and move the sign back, forcing blacks to rise and whites to get seats. Of course, those were the NICE whites. This movie beautifully shows that fact that some blacks did NOT meekly accept their mistreatment.
Though Vivian Thomas was not as aggressive as his brother, who sued the Nashville Board of Education to get equal pay for black school teachers, he nonetheless felt deeply the indifference the white doctors showed him. By not giving him the credit he deserved in performing this revolutionary operation on a blue baby, these doctors showed just how deeply the injustice of segregation was instilled in them. A more is some value you don't question, and the 'slightly less human' condition of black people in the South in my youth (and this time of the movie) was one of those mores.
To watch him work on the dog, closing his eyes to better feel the conjunction of the various heart arteries, I was wonderfully impressed. That doctor who was the consultant on this movie did an excellent job. The fact that even those who were complicit in the discrimination shown Vivian Thomas did not flinch from showing it in this movie impresses me no end.
For those of you not born in this time, you will find it difficult to believe but this mistreatment was not considered so during those years. The fact that Thomas lived in the slums while his colleague lived in a mansion is well illustrated. The only way he got to see his colleague honored in the Baltimore hotel was to pretend he was a lackey bringing in the suitcases. More insidious, the white surgeon portrayed by Rickman made no effort to invite him. The only indication that he had a conscience about this was his expression of 'vague regrets' when Thomas is wheeling him around in his wheelchair toward the end of his life.