05-29-2004, 12:05 PM
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[img]http://www.snitchseeker.com/images/news/snape_80.jpg' align='middle'> Rickman plays quiet hero in new movie - Summary:
On HBO Article:
Thanks to Wizardnews Quote: There are so few movies on television about good people doing good things. That's why the HBO film, "Something the Lord Made," based on a true story, struck a chord with me.
I wanted to see these unusual heroes succeed -- in this case, an unlikely collaboration between a heart surgeon and his assistant who in the 1930s and '40s revolutionized medicine. The two-hour made-for-TV movie premieres Sunday on HBO at 10 p.m.
One half of this heroic pair is Alfred Blalock, a white surgeon and chairman of surgery at Johns Hopkins University. The other is his black lab assistant, Vivien Thomas, who first started as a janitor for Blalock and worked his way up to become a key researcher and partner in Blalock's studies on the human heart.
Thomas (rap musician Mos Def) first got a job as a janitor in the labs at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, but Blalock (Alan Rickman) recognized his quick mind and deft hand with surgical tools.
At the time, the surgeon was studying the effects of surgical shock and its relationship to blood flow, using dogs for his experiments. Thomas became an invaluable assistant, picking up the surgical techniques on his own, developing medical theories and designing special surgical clamps.
Their work proved important on the battlefield as World War II broke out, and Blalock was offered the job to head the surgical department at Johns Hopkins, a position he took as long as he could bring Thomas with him.
But their work was tested as other white doctors questioned Blalock's relationship with a black research assistant.
Despite the bigotry, the pair continued to develop techniques in surgery. They developed a new procedure that involved redirecting blood flow through the lung and heart for babies stricken with "blue baby" syndrome, in which blood to the lung is constricted.
The overall story of two men, one white, the other black, may seem routine at times -- their struggles with prejudice, the friction that success creates between the two -- but there is an earnestness that makes it believable and moving.
Credit for that goes to two fine, controlled performances. Rickman, who has been spectacular playing operatic villains in "Die Hard" and the Harry Potter movies, is wonderfully eccentric but sincere as Blalock. And Mos Def is equally good as Thomas, playing him with an underlying humility and quietness.
"Something the Lord Made" is itself a quiet little film in which heroic deeds are not done on battlefields or arenas, but in backroom laboratories. It's an amazing true story about what moves the heart -- in more ways than one. -----
Television columnist Vince Horiuchi appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at vince@sltrib.com. Salt Lak Tribune  |