MARIE: I’ve been writing a few articles and book reviews for the Danish Parkinson’s Association’s magazine, and now Jon and I have just produced our first joint article. The editor asked us to go see the film Love and Other Drugs, and here is what we thought of it:
Parkinson’s: the Hollywood edition
The Hollywood film Love and Other Drugs has already been reviewed in the daily papers, so most readers probably know that it’s about Jamie, an unscrupulous motor mouth of a pharmaceutical sales rep (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who falls in love with Maggie, a laidback artist with early onset Parkinson’s and a tendency to prefer sex to tenderness (played by Anne Hathaway). The genre is rom-com. The comedy element is delivered by Jamie and his younger brother, a nerdy IT millionaire with a penchant for internet porn, while the romance appears as the relationship between Jamie and Maggie develops from an orgy of naked body parts into something more profound – and this is where PD comes in as the difficulty the lovers must surmount.
The film has had mixed reviews and has been criticized for being too kind to big pharma, to the point of being one long commercial for Jamie’s hottest product, Viagra. We don’t agree. While it is true that the film provides no exposé of the industry, it doesn’t pull its punches in the portrayal of superficial, fast talking and deeply unethical sales reps’ attempts to influence egocentric, drug addicted and disillusioned doctors.
Gyllenhaal and Hathaway both do a great job, and they are certainly easy on the eye in the many nude scenes, although that is perhaps less engrossing for a European audience than for the more prudish American home market. And yet the film feels flat. We laughed, but weren’t in tears of laughter. We were moved, but weren’t moved to the other kind of tears either. So we probably agree with the other point of criticism, that Love and Other Drugs is really two films squashed together into one manuscript: a satire on the pharmaceutical industry, and a romantic story about the difficulty of abandoning yourself to love when one partner has a chronic disease.
It is a rare treat to see Parkinson’s portrayed on screen, especially with a young PWP in the lead. It’s good that for once the disease is not delegated to a few tremulous extras at the back of a nursing home scene. It is perhaps less good that Maggie’s only symptoms are a mild hand tremor and some clumsiness, that her medication seems rather peculiar, and that she apparently has no need of a regular neurologist.
But Awakenings from 1990 (with Robert de Niro in one of his best performances), the only other film we know of about Parkinson’s disease, is no truthful document either. There is quite a gulf between the film and the reality presented in the book on which it is based, Dr Oliver Sacks’ Awakenings from 1973.
Does it matter? A cinema film only lasts a couple of hours, and Love and Other Drugs also needs to make time to be fun and a bit naughty. It doesn’t pretend to be more than it is: not great art, but good entertainment with perhaps a little bit of an edge. You don’t learn much about the symptoms of PD, but there are pretty effective (short) passages about how the disease affects every day life, relationships, hopes for the future and (self) confidence. Likewise, we liked the descriptions of Jamie’s wild hunt for a cure – on Maggie’s behalf, but without her consent – and of Maggie’s first meeting with other Parkinsonians.
At least the audience will know more about Parkinson’s Disease after watching Love and Other Drugs than one would know, say, about prostitution after watching Pretty Woman, or about paleontology after watching Jurassic Park. This is entertainment, but not just entertainment. And that’s actually good enough.
Showing posts with label Oliver Sacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oliver Sacks. Show all posts
14 March 2011
08 December 2009
Awakenings
MARIE: As Jon said, I was away for a good week, and a few days after I came back Jon went off to visit old friends and colleagues in England. He always leaves lots of spoor behind, so it took no great deductive powers to find that he had watched Awakenings again (the film based on the documentary based on the book by Oliver Sacks where he tells the stories of his patients who had an ultra-severe form of Parkinsonism brought on by the late effects of a particular type of encephalitis). It’s a very fine film, as we both thought when we first saw it, independently of each other and many years before Jon had any inkling it would gain a personal relevance. So thus prompted, I watched it too while Jon was away.
There is an element of self-pitying catharsis in it now. Because the film is a tear-jerker about people who have essentially the same symptoms as Jon, though orders of magnitude worse and at a time when effective medication was in its infancy, it is like seeing our little everyday struggles blown up to a scale where the dynamics and mechanics become crystal-clear. And that, of course, means we can see shades of ourselves in the situation and have a good old cry – ostensibly over the film, but really over ourselves. Which is nice, in a slightly twisted sort of way.
Having seen the film, which focuses on one particular patient, Leonard L., I also felt like dipping back into the original book to re-read his case history there. The film character is a simplification and generalization of the case history – and fair enough, film usually both adds to and detracts from the material on which it is based. The real story of Leonard L. is actually far more moving than the film, which presents him and the other patients as completely frozen physically and essentially catatonic before they are administered L-dopa. In reality, Leonard was highly intelligent, a Harvard Ph.D. student before his admission to hospital, and a voracious reader and book reviewer during his decades in hospital – so long as someone was there to do what his prison of body could not: turn the pages for him. Maybe it was simply one step too far to expect mass cinema audiences to enjoy a film about a man trapped alive in an immovable body? Better and easier to pretend that he was unaware.
But what struck me in particular this time round was the portrayal (identical in book and film) of Leonard’s relationship with his mother who cared for him throughout his illness, spending every single day in the hospital with him. In his pre-dopa state, he is physically like a huge, docile baby. His mother spoon-feeds him, dresses him, entertains him (i.e. turns his pages, I guess), even changes his nappies. She looks after him and speaks for him. It is, simultaneously, complete devotion and utter captivity. His feelings are apparently equally torn, as Sacks says he sees in Leonard alternating expressions of pleasure and resentment.
But the thing, which may seem surprising but is probably almost inevitable, is that his mother (and many of the other patients’ relatives, too) is deeply unhappy with the initial improvement brought about by L-dopa. In many cases (in reality as in the film) the first reaction of patients to L-dopa is almost miraculous – from frozen statues to almost normal function (though this does not last beyond some weeks or months before very severe side effects set in and force the termination of treatment). But where does this sudden improvement and independence leave the devoted carer whose life and purpose revolves around the sick bed? Suddenly you are adrift, surplus to requirements, perhaps mostly a reminder of bad times. In fact, I recently read a (Danish) self-help book about how to make your marriage survive illness, where the authors discussed how couples often split up because they cannot handle the cure – the partner who was ill tends to get euphoric and self-centered, while the partner who was caring gets depressed and feels abandoned.
In a very small way, we experienced a bit of the same when Jon got better after he stopped the Sifrol that was giving him such hideous side effects (as described in posts mainly from August to October 2008). I found it hard to accept that he really was permanently better, that he didn’t need my help any longer and actively didn’t want me to give him his medication or even necessarily know exactly what he was taking. I found it surprisingly difficult to relinquish responsibility, especially over medication, and he found it quite impossible to live with me in control of it. He felt smothered, I felt rejected. I pleaded, he stone-walled. Eventually we saw a couples therapist and got over it, but not easily – and that was after just a few months of impairment. I have only the tiniest inkling of what it must have been like for Leonard and his mother. Enough, though, to require several tissues to mop up.
There is an element of self-pitying catharsis in it now. Because the film is a tear-jerker about people who have essentially the same symptoms as Jon, though orders of magnitude worse and at a time when effective medication was in its infancy, it is like seeing our little everyday struggles blown up to a scale where the dynamics and mechanics become crystal-clear. And that, of course, means we can see shades of ourselves in the situation and have a good old cry – ostensibly over the film, but really over ourselves. Which is nice, in a slightly twisted sort of way.
Having seen the film, which focuses on one particular patient, Leonard L., I also felt like dipping back into the original book to re-read his case history there. The film character is a simplification and generalization of the case history – and fair enough, film usually both adds to and detracts from the material on which it is based. The real story of Leonard L. is actually far more moving than the film, which presents him and the other patients as completely frozen physically and essentially catatonic before they are administered L-dopa. In reality, Leonard was highly intelligent, a Harvard Ph.D. student before his admission to hospital, and a voracious reader and book reviewer during his decades in hospital – so long as someone was there to do what his prison of body could not: turn the pages for him. Maybe it was simply one step too far to expect mass cinema audiences to enjoy a film about a man trapped alive in an immovable body? Better and easier to pretend that he was unaware.
But what struck me in particular this time round was the portrayal (identical in book and film) of Leonard’s relationship with his mother who cared for him throughout his illness, spending every single day in the hospital with him. In his pre-dopa state, he is physically like a huge, docile baby. His mother spoon-feeds him, dresses him, entertains him (i.e. turns his pages, I guess), even changes his nappies. She looks after him and speaks for him. It is, simultaneously, complete devotion and utter captivity. His feelings are apparently equally torn, as Sacks says he sees in Leonard alternating expressions of pleasure and resentment.
But the thing, which may seem surprising but is probably almost inevitable, is that his mother (and many of the other patients’ relatives, too) is deeply unhappy with the initial improvement brought about by L-dopa. In many cases (in reality as in the film) the first reaction of patients to L-dopa is almost miraculous – from frozen statues to almost normal function (though this does not last beyond some weeks or months before very severe side effects set in and force the termination of treatment). But where does this sudden improvement and independence leave the devoted carer whose life and purpose revolves around the sick bed? Suddenly you are adrift, surplus to requirements, perhaps mostly a reminder of bad times. In fact, I recently read a (Danish) self-help book about how to make your marriage survive illness, where the authors discussed how couples often split up because they cannot handle the cure – the partner who was ill tends to get euphoric and self-centered, while the partner who was caring gets depressed and feels abandoned.
In a very small way, we experienced a bit of the same when Jon got better after he stopped the Sifrol that was giving him such hideous side effects (as described in posts mainly from August to October 2008). I found it hard to accept that he really was permanently better, that he didn’t need my help any longer and actively didn’t want me to give him his medication or even necessarily know exactly what he was taking. I found it surprisingly difficult to relinquish responsibility, especially over medication, and he found it quite impossible to live with me in control of it. He felt smothered, I felt rejected. I pleaded, he stone-walled. Eventually we saw a couples therapist and got over it, but not easily – and that was after just a few months of impairment. I have only the tiniest inkling of what it must have been like for Leonard and his mother. Enough, though, to require several tissues to mop up.
22 June 2008
Out and about
We attended a rather formal do this week, in the shape of a lecture at the university with reception at a fancy hotel afterwards. It was a chance for me to see a bunch of old colleagues, and Marie tagged along to keep me out of mischief. I thought I’d dress up for the occasion so wore my best black socks with the velcro-strappy sandals that are by far the easiest shoes for me to get into. My dear wife (and her gaggle of sisters) have a down on men with socks and sandals, but nobody at the do commented on my choice of footwear, so there!
I was rather concerned about having to sit through about 90 minutes of speeches and lecturing first. The thing is that when I have sat for a bit I get this uncontrollable urge to stand up – sometimes after just a few minutes, other times I can sit like a normal person for an hour or more. Of course, when the urge grabs me I can’t just stand up quietly and unobtrusively. Oh no, I need to get a firm handhold, preferably on the chairback and ponytail of the person in the row in front of me, so I can lift-push myself upwards (with a forceful primeval grunt) and then start urgent pacing to loosen up my joints. Fortunately, the gods of something or other were with me – no urges to jump up, no twitching. My only problem was staying awake…
About the urge to move, I’ve been reading Oliver Sacks’ book Awakenings (the book behind the documentary behind the film) where he tells the stories of his patients who had an ultra-severe form of Parkinson’s brought on by the late effects of a particular type of encephalitis. The book is hardly a jolly romp (and is sadly lacking in car chases) but there are a lot of things I recognize, even at my fairly early stage. These patients are so extravagantly ill that it’s like looking at (some of) my symptoms blown up 1,000 times so they become really obvious and clear. And Sacks talks about the urge to move as something quite common, matched almost exactly and horribly unfairly by the inability to move of his ‘frozen’ patients. It’s as if the muscles that have been quietly spasming along with their barely noticeable tremors suddenly need to release all the pent-up energy in big and urgent exercise. An excellent way to draw attention to yourself in a large lecture hall, so I was very relieved to get through to the reception without making a spectacle of myself.
At the reception many people that I haven’t seen since shortly after my diagnosis last year came up to me and asked how I was doing. I tried out several answers that I thought might be socially acceptable (since few people want to stand in the middle of wine and nibbles with somebody else’s truth dripping all down their shirt fronts). I had a go with ‘Much better, thank you’ – a blatant lie in view of the progressive nature of PD. But since I have developed an uncharacteristic light suntan that was generally interpreted as signalling some miracle cure, no-one called me on my lie. I also tried out ‘Much better now that the medication is working’, which is a nice little half-truth since this ‘much better’ relies on me taking 26 pills per day at various times and in various combinations, with a catalogue of interesting side effects as I’ve talked about in earlier posts. My last variation was totally truthful, yet again manages to throw a sociable veil over daily life: ‘Thank you, much better than I was this time last year’, which is when I was sky-high on far too much morphine and not yet on PD meds. But it was nice of them all to ask, and I did enjoy myself.
After an hour or so of this I felt I’d done enough and talked to all those I wanted to catch up with, so I looked round for Marie to drag me away. And bugger me, she was nowhere to be seen. I checked inside the reception room – not there. Checked the outdoor area – not there. Started to panic, festinating my way with tiny, rapid steps round the main room again like some little lost boy – and then suddenly she was there again, having just been to the loo. I was so relieved I bought her flowers on the way home (an occurrence so rare its precedents can be counted on the fingers of a mountaineer with severe frostbite). This dependence thing has the potential to get quite disturbing for both of us, but I may just save that worry for another day.
I was rather concerned about having to sit through about 90 minutes of speeches and lecturing first. The thing is that when I have sat for a bit I get this uncontrollable urge to stand up – sometimes after just a few minutes, other times I can sit like a normal person for an hour or more. Of course, when the urge grabs me I can’t just stand up quietly and unobtrusively. Oh no, I need to get a firm handhold, preferably on the chairback and ponytail of the person in the row in front of me, so I can lift-push myself upwards (with a forceful primeval grunt) and then start urgent pacing to loosen up my joints. Fortunately, the gods of something or other were with me – no urges to jump up, no twitching. My only problem was staying awake…
About the urge to move, I’ve been reading Oliver Sacks’ book Awakenings (the book behind the documentary behind the film) where he tells the stories of his patients who had an ultra-severe form of Parkinson’s brought on by the late effects of a particular type of encephalitis. The book is hardly a jolly romp (and is sadly lacking in car chases) but there are a lot of things I recognize, even at my fairly early stage. These patients are so extravagantly ill that it’s like looking at (some of) my symptoms blown up 1,000 times so they become really obvious and clear. And Sacks talks about the urge to move as something quite common, matched almost exactly and horribly unfairly by the inability to move of his ‘frozen’ patients. It’s as if the muscles that have been quietly spasming along with their barely noticeable tremors suddenly need to release all the pent-up energy in big and urgent exercise. An excellent way to draw attention to yourself in a large lecture hall, so I was very relieved to get through to the reception without making a spectacle of myself.
At the reception many people that I haven’t seen since shortly after my diagnosis last year came up to me and asked how I was doing. I tried out several answers that I thought might be socially acceptable (since few people want to stand in the middle of wine and nibbles with somebody else’s truth dripping all down their shirt fronts). I had a go with ‘Much better, thank you’ – a blatant lie in view of the progressive nature of PD. But since I have developed an uncharacteristic light suntan that was generally interpreted as signalling some miracle cure, no-one called me on my lie. I also tried out ‘Much better now that the medication is working’, which is a nice little half-truth since this ‘much better’ relies on me taking 26 pills per day at various times and in various combinations, with a catalogue of interesting side effects as I’ve talked about in earlier posts. My last variation was totally truthful, yet again manages to throw a sociable veil over daily life: ‘Thank you, much better than I was this time last year’, which is when I was sky-high on far too much morphine and not yet on PD meds. But it was nice of them all to ask, and I did enjoy myself.
After an hour or so of this I felt I’d done enough and talked to all those I wanted to catch up with, so I looked round for Marie to drag me away. And bugger me, she was nowhere to be seen. I checked inside the reception room – not there. Checked the outdoor area – not there. Started to panic, festinating my way with tiny, rapid steps round the main room again like some little lost boy – and then suddenly she was there again, having just been to the loo. I was so relieved I bought her flowers on the way home (an occurrence so rare its precedents can be counted on the fingers of a mountaineer with severe frostbite). This dependence thing has the potential to get quite disturbing for both of us, but I may just save that worry for another day.
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