Review: A Deepcut Masterwork, ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica Is Already One Of 2023s Best Movies
Unlike De Humani Corporis Fabrica, I didn't stare, slouch, squint, or cross my legs during this year's Best Picture. The latest installment by Lucien Castaigne-Taylor and Verena Paravel (Leviathan, Cannibal) of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, delve into the pulsating caverns and blood-soaked passages of the human body, turning this grisly series of surgical procedures into wonders. . Sight and sound. , drill and pliers, flesh and blood, life and death. À la found medical recherche à la Frederick Wiseman et voyage d'horreur endoscopique, c'est quelque chose à vivre, ideale dans un theatre - pas un theatre, mais une salle d'operation - bien que les cineasters aient un talent particulier pour masquer the difference.
Their latest work takes its name from Andreas Vesalius's study of human anatomy in the 16th century and owes its existence to specially designed cameras that are small enough to look into the brain and gut - and look directly into a sad, blind moment. in the eyeball where the lens is implanted. This particular sequence provides a good early test of your fight-or-flight instincts. Your eyes probably close-ups of all those little red veins, the orange clock mirror, and the scraping and massaging motions of the probe across the cornea, before the camera suddenly zooms in to confirm that all this violence is indeed by this instrument. A highly sensitive (albeit temporarily weakened) human organ in full consciousness.
On the other hand, you can dazzle even your toes by viewing the bizarre and unworldly images created by the professionals at work and their work. The fiery red-orange glow of the iris, the sudden puff of cleansing and calming liquid (hopefully), and finally, the final batch of citrate, ta-da! The new lens snaps into place with the precision of the vehicle in the glass. It's amazing what you, the viewer, can pick up on the human body. This film has been approved by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Recently awarded the Douglas Edwards Award for Experimental Film, the definition might be "not very appetizing." Yet he traversed this hero's path (twice!) with a newfound respect for the perseverance of his body and an ever-deeper respect for the doctors who had so boldly cut it.
"De Humani Corporis Fabrica" was filmed over a period of six years in eight French hospitals (mainly Hôpital Bajon in Paris and Hôpital Hêtre-Claude Bernard) in close collaboration with patients and healthcare professionals, including us. Many of us have seen it. He has preliminary plans for several operating rooms and tables. Casting-Taylor and Paravel layer this material over and over again, immersing us in the routine rhythms of hospital life before taking us to the next stop on their surgical mystery tour. It is often a relief when they reappear; On the cutting edge, the filmmakers want to keep moving forward. They are artists skilled enough to present their pieces with a steady hand.
Zooming in and out also creates an important contrapuntal rhythm between clinicians and patients, between the physical and the abstract. As easy as it is to get lost in all those stunning images that explore the void, Castaigne-Taylor and Paravel never let us lose sight of the flesh-and-blood reality of what we're looking at. Many of the operations are accompanied by the disembodied voices of surgeons and nurses, who sometimes engage in casual conversation (the two discuss rent in a cliché) and sometimes contextualize the images they see. And what you see isn't always obvious: A C-section is very obvious; The burnt layers of a newly removed tumor are not much. I still do not know what happened to all the spongy and membranous matter around the patient's pituitary gland, or the exact purpose of the little instrument which, like a small lawn mower and welding machine, removes, cuts and burns its tubular environment. together.
The technology is incredibly complex. But De Humani Corporis Fabrica reminds us that even though these devices were invented, they are still controlled by human hands, and these hands are not always in their best shape or in complete control of what they do. In one particularly disturbing episode, the surgeon brazenly attempts to perform a prostatectomy without Retzius' help ("I watched an Indian master class," he says, and it wasn't entirely reassuring) for the first time.
Even when things go relatively well—no bleeding, no broken instruments—the film spends a lot of time on the medical staff and their frustrations and daily weariness. We hear them swear and complain about the grueling hours and incompetent colleagues, the massive shortages and the extreme workloads and callousness. "I'm a robot... I'm about to have a heart attack," the doctor complains after quickly refusing a routine but terrifying procedure known as a penis, urethral drill, and a "Kalashnikov." facility.”
Ironically, some highly trained medical professionals do not take good care of themselves. At such moments, De Humani Corporis Fabrica is not only tense and overwhelming, but also deeply moving; He knows the idea of some sort of soul-body transmutation, that healing other people's bodies is always damaging to his own. This is no less so in the many scenes of non-surgical care: in the corridor as the staff tries to get a patient with dementia back to his room, or in the intensive care unit, as the nurse engages in a long, agonizing monologue. the horrors he experienced. We see it every day. It is one of the least revealing scenes in this extraordinary film, and one of the most powerful, reminding us of how fragile and precious the bonds that unite the body with the living and the dead with the spirit are.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
