Few scenes in movie history have the emotional impact on me that the scene in which Bearing's mentor reads The Runaway Bunny to her has. I've seen Wit three times and each time, I can't stop crying once she starts reading the story. There's just something so incredibly sad about having this dying intellectual in the most horrible pains listening to such a sweet, simple children's story. Anyone else who was profoundly moved by this particular scene?
shareYes...I saw Wit when it was first shown on HBO, and have very recently become a complete nut for Emma Thompson. So, I've gotten about 10 of her DVD's, this being one of them. I just saw it yesterday, actually, for the first time since its debut. This very scene is, for me, probably the most emotionally powerful one in the whole film. I definitely cried as well. Just as another poster commented, the fact that these two intellectuals are bonding over a simple children's story just make you think of the end of life, and the very, very simple comforts people need. The patient has no family, is all alone every day during her sickness, and her mentor from so many years back learned of her condition and came to visit her. That fact alone I found quite touching. But when she reads the story, and later tells her to rest/let go...(I believe she alluded something to the effect of asking her not to be afraid to let go), I just lost it.
I don't recall seeing Eileen Atkins in anything else, other than reteaming with Emma Thompson only very recently, playing her mother in Last Chance Harvey (another film I loved, in its simplicity). I should check out Atkins' work as well.
My mother did the same thing for her dad when he was dying of cancer, only she read Robert Munsch's Love You Forever which was all the more poignant and intensely personal. I can remember being 5 years old, sitting in the hospital listening to it. That scene might appear manipulative in a different context, but it has a ring of truth to it here. I'm thinking about showing my mother this movie now given the parallel, but the extreme sob attack just might send her into cardiac arrest .
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
Who cannot be moved by this scene? A lot of credit to Eileen Atkins as the Prof. Yet, no one mentions the music for this scene which contributes a lot to the emotions overflowing. What is this piece of music called and who wrote it?
shareSomething else to note, is that she's spent her entire life as a scholar, studying these incredibly complex works on life, death, and salvation, never even fully understanding it herself. Then this simple little story is able to illustrate it so perfectly. Just as "soporific" was illustrated to her so long ago.
It's just so beautiful!
What is this piece of music called and who wrote it?
I don't know if this is too late. But the simple song that repeats itself - the simple movements
is by the Czche Republic composer Arvi Part. It is just wonderful and I have it in many of my playlists. Please see below. I believe the translation of the time is 'Mirror vs. Mirror'.
"Spiegel im Spiegel"
Written by Arvo Pärt
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Courtesy of ECM Records
Enjoy it!
I don't know if this is too late. But the simple song that repeats itself - the simple movements
is by the Czche Republic composer Arvi Part. It is just wonderful and I have it in many of my playlists. Please see below. I believe the translation of the time is 'Mirror vs. Mirror'.
"Spiegel im Spiegel"
Written by Arvo Pärt
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Courtesy of ECM Records
Enjoy it!
I, a sixty year old male, did indeed cry during that reading scene. Thank God I was alone at the time lest I be labeled a girly-man. It reminded me all too clearly of sitting with a friend while he entered the last week of his life from the ravages of cancer and how we got him to awaken from his semi-comatose state and laugh while recalling a funny event in his life. He and some friends were going fishing and the bait for those particular fish was kernels of corn. Each man was to bring a can of corn. One not particularly observant fellow looked at his can and tried to hide it from view. His friends wrestled it from his grasp and revealed that he had brought a can of 'creamed corn'. Try putting that on a hook.
While I agree that her hiding under the sheets she was hiding from God I also felt that she was hiding from her disease. It was like her disease was an entity outside herself attacking her and she was attempting to employ the only strategy left to defeat it: hide from it.
I liked the scene---although I wasn't keen on the religious aspects of it--- probably because I was so hungry for someone to care about Vivian at this point.
I was really glad when the mentor says, "Would you like me to recite Donne?" Vivian said "No", since I was thinking the same thing exactly. Actually, I was thinking, "Hell, no!"
But I thought it highly unlikely that Vivian's icy former mentor would have the wherewithal to be able to interact to someone on a human level like this, especially on her death bed. I think in real life, the Mentor would have stopped in with a useless gift (e.g., a rare first edition), tried to have an academic conversation with her, and run out of there as soon as she could.
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No, no, no ... I believe you have erred, spammy-5, in your thinking "it highly unlikely that Vivian's icy former mentor would have the wherewithal to be able to interact to someone on a human level like this...." At the end of that initial scene where we meet Professor E.M. Ashford, after she chastises Vivian for intellectual errors (or some kind of laziness, even) she advises Vivian NOT to go back to the library (where evidently Vivian believes she can do more WORK/STUDY/RESEARCH/find the proper edition of Donne or whatever to improve her paper), but Prof. Ashford tells her instead, "It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point. Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Huh?" Now, that is how we know Prof. Ashford, for all her formidable erudition, is evidently plenty human and understands the human conditions from which Donne wrote these profound insights about life, death and life everlasting. In this way, Prof. Ashford said a little earlier in her initial scene, "One learns from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semi-colons. Just a comma. Nothing but a breath...a comma...separates life from life everlasting.... Death...is a comma. A pause." This is how and why Donne has spoken to generation after generation (as we see illustrated here from Prof. Ashford to Prof. Bearing to Dr. Jason and on and on...) through the ages since he wrote the Holy Sonnets...when people who both study out his words and thinking and feeling and then UNDERSTANDING them as well. Vivian picked up on the mechanics of this as a student and then taught them as a professor herself. But evidently it took her own experience with dying to UNDERSTAND and then look back and UNDERSTAND all that Prof. Ashford and Vivian's own students had to teach her. And in those humble moments, we also learn, "Death be not proud." That is a both a Godly AND human statement to understand and make. Prof. Ashford had learned this and wanted her students to learn--and experience--it as well. She practiced what she preached, so to speak, and did not shy away from sharing her human touch, voice and emotion with her much loved protegée. She came to visit her dying student. And then she quoted, not Donne which Vivian had refused when Ashford asked, but Shakespeare, which Ashford had earlier belittled; Ashford quoted from Shakespeare's Hamlet, his friend Horatio's farewell to his sweet prince (that is, Hamlet), "And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."
shareUm-ok, Holmswed. If I erred a year ago, I concede. You're right and I'm wrong.
shareUh...well...that's an humbling reply. I don't suppose I should draw from this any role-playing parallels between myself as Prof. E.M. Ashford and you, spammy-5, as Vivian Bearing... heh, heh....
shareFunny!
Peace : )
Spammy
Eileen Atkins also appeared in "Jack and Sarah" a heartwarming film about a widower and how his life is turned upside down in an instant.
She was excellent in her role as were Richard E. Grant, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellan and Samantha Mathis.
It's one of my favorite films.
You are so right - I need only remember the scene and my eyes turn misty.
Very powerful!
"Oh yes, the past can hurt. But, you can either run from it or, learn from it."
A very powerful scene where barriers are broken down literally and figuratively.
My other favourite moment is the scene that culminates in the Vivien's honest admission: I have been found out.
yeah, that's obviously one of the most tear-inducing parts of the film. just reading about it is making me tear up again. such a hard film to watch...
shareDitto. I can't watch that scene without crying. It's so sweet and heartbreaking at the same time. Keep in mind, I'm not a fragile flower that cries at the drop of a hat, but damn, this scene makes me go from shedding manly tears to a sobbing wreck.
share