Hollywood Versifier: Death, Be Not Proud

Movies aren't kind to academics, generally. (Unless Ron Howard is lushly glossing over the life of some other closeted paranoid schizophrenic.) For one thing, it's difficult to make thinking look compelling on film without resorting to cliché.

For another thing, the narrow, specialized subject matter tends to turn off the general moviegoing public. We love ourselves a good inspirational story involving learning ("Emperor's Club", "Freedom Writers" and other "Dead Poets' Society" knockoffs, "Stand and Deliver") but it's harder to make intellectuals seem important and not just way far up their own hinders. 

"Good Will Hunting" does a pretty good job of it, mostly by showing the flaws and insecurity behind the intellectual rigor. That movie gets a lot of crap from people who think they're too good for it, but I stand behind the flick. And "Wonderboys" is also a pretty entertaining movie that also shows some of the politics that goes into higher education.

But I think the best film to balance academia with a vital story is the cable TV adaptation of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer-winning play Wit. Emma Thompson plays Vivian Bearing, a literature professor coping with her own mortality in the face of being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Bearing's specialty is John Donne, especially his Holy Sonnets, which is fitting considering how Donne wrote at such great length on his own sickness and death.

I don't want to give the whole movie away, but I highly recommend you rent/stream it. In fact, you can watch it on YouTube if you don't mind it being cut up into 10-minute chunks. 

Here's one of the final scenes.

"Death be not proud"

John Donne

Death be not proud, though some have called thee  
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,  
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,  
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.  
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,          
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,  
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,  
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.  
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,  
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,  
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,  
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;  
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,  
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.