Jun 25, 2016 06:40 AM
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Wit is not a story of survival. Instead, the film deconstructs the typical tale of staying strong through cancer treatment, overcoming the odds, and surviving.
The film skillfully constructs a story of repair and restoration of the individual not through treatment of the body ravaged by cancer, but by admitting one’s weaknesses, exposing oneself, and, perhaps most frightening of all, relinquishing control and, in the process, becoming vulnerable. In the end, one is left with the feeling that the main character of the play is being “healed, not cured”(M. Edson, Personal Communication, March 13, 2015).
On March 13, 2015 we sat down with Margaret Edson, the playwright whose 1993 stage play, Wit, served as the source material for the 2001 HBO film in her home to discuss her play and the subsequent HBO adaptation. Reflecting on her writing, Edson characterized Wit as a struggle between herself and her creation, Dr. Vivian Bearing. While Edson relinquished creative control over the film adaptation of her work, the film still retains this conflict between character and creator through the use of flashbacks that often interrupt the present hospital setting of the play.
In these scenes, Professor Bearing seems to wrest control from Edson and become the director by staging the action and interjecting her own commentary. According to Edson, “We understand as much as our previous experience prepares us for.” Rather than admitting that she is feeling vulnerable, or does not understand what is happening in the hospital environment, Professor Bearing uses flashbacks to cope with the unfamiliar and regain her power by situating the unknowable present in the knowable past.
