As a person born with a genetic disorder that suffers from a variety of maladies, I have a very hard time being sympathetic towards people in the medical profession. Many times, it seems like being a doctor requires you to turn off your heart (so to speak) and treat everything like a problem that needs to be solved, forgetting about human things like emotion and fear.
This movie is very useful for people like me in that it makes doctors human again.
I admit that in the past, I have often vacillated in my opinion on this movie. The main character (William Hurt) does not appear to have learned anything by this movie's conclusion. While he is more sympathetic to the fears and woes that patients suffer, much of the underlying pathology present in the medical profession in general is downplayed. For example, the variety of cancer patients that have to suffer either painful or humiliating deaths (or both) because their cases were mishandled seem to simply be put aside as mistakes that happen because doctors are human.
That may be the point, though.
Without spoiling excessively, the final scene of the movie involves Hurt's character getting a message from a friend of his, a terminal cancer patient played by Elizabeth Perkins that had died recently. She tells a story about a farmer who is feared by crows because he chases them violently off his farm. One day, he changes his heart and comes outside, raising his arms to welcome the crows. But no crows come - because they are terrified of the farmer's new scarecrow. Doctors have a path to follow. When they find what they are looking for, they must use their knowledge and compassion together to create a new path for themselves. They cannot expect the world to forget their distrust in a heartbeat. It takes demonstrated work.
This is what "The Doctor" teaches you. Doctors and patients alike should give this movie a fair shake. It may not be a classic piece of film, but it is a very compassionate, heartfelt story.
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