You Should See: W;t

All my film-school friends are rolling their eyes and saying, "duh."  But I've found that very few people outside of that circle have even heard of this gem.  So do me a favor and get your hands on a copy of W;t if you haven't before.  It was originally written for the stage (won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999), my friend Elary starred in it right before we went to London for a semester abroad, so she got to be the tall, bald girl in the group.    This made for TV version won 3 Emmys and 2 Golden Globes. W;t, or Wit for pronunciation's sake, is an introspective, almost antiseptic look at the experience of dying.  It appropriately stacks the inevitability of death and spirituality against the learning of the "learned".  It also, inevitably, makes me cry so hard my nose runs down my chin.  Having had my mother work in hospice for 6+ years and having heard so many stories of the process of dying, I cry even harder.  If you can get over the grossly inaccurate portrait of how doctors and residents behave then you might weep too.  Parts of this story left me achingly empty, but in a productive way.  You have a character who has valued prestige over nurturing relationships, and when it comes down to it, she is shockingly alone.  Over and over I just wanted to be her friend and hold her hand and cry for her and with her.... except she's a fictional character so that's not going to work out.  But if that impulse can be constructively carried over to real life relationships when the film ends, then the creators of this tearjerker have accomplished something rather eternal in nature, haven't they?