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Some medical and racial boundaries are meant to

By Virginia Heffernan
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Jun 30, 2006, Page 17

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HBO

Something the Lord Made, an HBO original production which premiered in the US in 2004, will premier in Taiwan on HBO on Tuesday. It is supposed to be an uplifting tear-jerker about two men who defy racism to accomplish miracles. Fortunately, it's much, much better than that. As Alan Rickman plays him, Dr. Alfred Blalock, who pioneered open-heart surgery, initially for the treatment of blue babies, is an ambiguous hero. And he's not just cosmetically ambiguous, as so many movie heroes are, their bad qualities (messiness, a taste for Champagne) being little more than charm.

He's simply not charming. Rickman's Blalock has a venal air, an oleaginous, even faintly lecherous manner and a cloying self-regard that appears to blind him at times to the very existence of other people. Rickman deserves praise for forfeiting the opportunity to play an attractive Southern gentleman; he does not muck up his performance with cuteness.

By contrast, his partner in surgery, Vivien Thomas (Mos Def), is cute: charming, kind and physically agile, with a knack for dignified deference of the kind that possibly characterized model black men during segregation days, when much of this movie is set. But Thomas is also depressed, almost fatally. Blalock hires him in the Depression-era South, first as a janitor and then as a lab tech-nician, for which Thomas is evidently supposed to be grateful. Grateful? He tirelessly earns every promotion with technical work and medical insights that go largely uncredited. He submits to Jim Crow, refraining from using the hospital's front door. And he's paid virtually nothing, US$16 a week for 16 hours a day, as he says, working after hours at Blalock's whites-only cocktail parties to make ends meet.

This enlightening movie tells the story of two men who through mutual respect broke the rules and sparked a medical revolution. PHOTOS COURTESY OF HBO

It's grinding racism; it's unjust. But the movie underscores the real problem that torments Thomas: Why is he supposed to be grateful? Because Blalock doesn't run from him in horror? As Blalock's only interest is in rising to prominence as a surgeon, why imagine that anything but pure opportunism led him to exploit the intelligence and surgical talents of his teenage janitor? We need not. That's it. Blalock wanted fame, and he took on a black man who helped him develop his most important procedures, a surgical assistant who gives him instructions in the operating room. For not going to ludicrous lengths to conceal Thomas's achievements though he didn't trumpet them, either he's not due gratitude. All that would be clear if it weren't for one catch: Thomas loves the work. He loves and Mos Def pulls this off the euphoria of medical discovery. He loves, just as Blalock does, the surgeon's high. And, without a medical degree or the time or money to pursue one, he can get that high only by Blalock's side.

A cornier movie would twist this logic to let Thomas have both, somehow: his freedom from patronage and his accomplishments. But here he has to choose. Can he forfeit his pride, even his humanity, for the joy of good work?

Film Notes: Something the Lord Made Directed by: Joseph Sargent Starring: Alan Rickman (Dr. Blalock), Mos Def (Vivien Thomas), Kyra Sedgwick (Mary Blalock), Gabrielle Union (Clara Thomas), Charles S. Dutton (William Thomas) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Dr. Taussig)) Running time: 110 minutes Taiwan Release: Premiers on HBO this Tuesday

Something the Lord Made is based on a true story, and it faithfully tracks the rise of both Blalock and Thomas. But along the way, the weepy movie raises true moral stakes, the ones in good fiction, and they make the tears the film works to inspire feel more real.
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