This film truly caught my attention, I just watched on TV, and was really impressed. Why? well, we could say that there probably are a lot of these films (almost a sub-genre within drama movies) when regarding to the tone, characters, existential conflicts and ideal-moral messages but I think this one stands aside.
The story is very simple, the acting is great but realistic, the film is shot in a very classical style, the conflicts are there, my point is that despite we (as an audience) have all the elements at the surface, this film runs more deep and has more layers than it seems at first sight. The true power or engine here is the script, which hides beneath the great cast and wonderful directing, it allows us to think a predictable-known story in a symbolic (and political) way, opening a lot of cognitive doors that can take us apart from the plain meaning to different new levels of thinking these very same elements.
For instance, we have a "doctor" who is actually tortured by the burocratics politics of the very same hospital he works for, and finds himself becoming, first a patient, afterwards something less than human (although not like Kafka's Gregor) because of the medical protocol doctors tend to follow. Also, he meets a woman who was sentenced to die by her medical insurance company (another Kafka theme, the destiny or conviction taken upon ourselves). So he ends up discovering the truth of his reality and himself, waking from his dream-death (as an institutionalized being) reforging his identity and humanity. It's interesting to find here two important's elements such as the mythological way of understanding living as a dream and death as life, like a new state of mind only perceived after dying; and second, the battle the hero in modern days fights for, his self-independency.
This is obviously a political allegory against the powers that rules our lives and fates, and can-must be thought in any other line of work, but got to admit that gains another dimension by being themselves DOCTORS, and not caring at all about us, just only money motivated like a sales man would.
The Doctor is much more complex and I hope people would give this film a chance, it's the exact opposite and in my opinion a future reference to what any medical(TV or film) story should aim for.
p.s.: Mike Nichol's Regarding Henry it's in a similar level than this one.
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