ldecola

Surgery is a technology in which a man - or, rarely, woman - is the center of a ridiculously expensive system of machines and people. In the pantheon of our advanced techno-culture the doctor is a god, and surgeons the supreme deities, so it is indeed fascinating to watch these wizards perform their magic, and intriguing as well to learn a bit about their personalities and (less so) about their personal roots and private lives. What I found particularly provocative is the way the three men* cloak their supreme egoism in deep spirituality, giving a nod to their own god(s) for the genius they perform. *I was unable to watch more than the first few minutes of one of the portraits - the transplant surgeon reminded me too much of a ship's captain under which I once served: extremely skilled but brutally demanding and unforgivingly rude. Is this what may sometimes be required for a woman to rise into the surgical empyrean - was she a tyrant to begin with, or did that hardness grow out of her struggle to rise in the patriarchy?

Watch out - the streaming version I saw on Netflix had the dialog bowdlerized. E.g. when an actor said "son of a bitch" you hear "son of a gun," and so forth. I could tell this was coming because the quality of the sound changed.

Netflix says they distribute the movies as is, so this must have been done upstream.

I'd be interested to know how many of the revelations the Matthau character puts in his book are actually true: seems like I heard that the CIA did try to slip poison cigars to Castro.

Otherwise, an amusing (and unbelievable) film with exciting locations.

Lee De Cola.