Threshold (1983)

Simply A Masterpiece

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Crappy film

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I wish this film would come out on DVD. Others here have written well about the movie, so I won't add to that. But it's illuminating that 25 years after I first saw it, there are scenes that still stand out vividly in my mind. One of my favorites is when, the night before the surgery while Sutherland is making his final plans, he pauses for a moment in front of the x-ray light box, and spreads his hand out on it. He quietly examines his hand, the hand of a surgeon that will soon cut out a woman's heart and replace it with a machine. Can he really do it? Should he? An amazing moment. Whoever has the rights, please release this on DVD!

In the ten years or so before this film's release there was a flurry of high-profile breakthroughs in cardiovascular surgery. Heart transplants, bypass surgery, mechanical hearts, animal hearts in human bodies. Names like DeBakey became household words.One might imagine this low-budget movie to be a sensationalized cashing in on the popularity of the subject, but it isn't that at all. It's a slow-moving and thoughtful story of a young woman's having an artificial heart implant, the original bionic woman. And it's no small thing. Not to the administrators, not to the inventor, not to the surgeon, and certainly not to the patient.The surgeon is Donald Southerland and he's already world famous, the kind of guy who strikes awe in others at medical conventions. And Southerland's performance, like those of the other principals, is unimpeachable. He's the kind of guy you want for your surgeon when your time comes -- always relaxed, confident, sympathetic but honest, and eyeball-coagulatingly competent. Marcus Welby without the small-town cornball crap. When he finishes the climactic two-and-a-half hour operation, he goes to his office, props his feet carelessly on a table, sighs, and watches TV. The majority of us would be out getting juiced up or sobbing in a church pew. The best thing about Southerland's character is his lack of arrogance. He's not a narcissist despite the standing ovation. And the actor is able to project this, the kind of self-regard that comes not from pride but from satisfaction at having done a good job and helped someone else in the process. I've seen standing ovations for professionals and the recipients were all visibly moved more than Southerland, who seems surprised. Vincent Scully got such an ovation before his last class at Yale. I never got a standing ovation, but I got several good laughs. Once at a late-night lecture on sociological theory I spoonerized the term "structural-functional." And once at a convention, a stranger approached me with a shy smile and said, "You're (insert my name here), aren't you?" I blushed slightly and admitted to being that personage and asked if he was familiar with my work. "No, I don't know you," he said, "I just read your name tag." The impudent pup. A standing ovation and five dollars will get you a free cafe mocha at Starbuck's.Where was I? Oh, yes. The movie. Jeff Goldblum is the inventor. And man is he a different type. Where Doctor Southerland avoids publicity and hossanahs from the press, knowing that something could go South at any moment, Goldblum takes eagerly to the airways. He's not an egotist either, but a visionary. You know, the kind of guy who intuits the future and carries on about "new paradigms." Southerland becomes angry and tries unsuccessfully to keep Goldblum quiet. The script has a surgeon ask Goldblum if he is a doctor. "Yes -- umm, biology." The surgeon says contemptuously, "Biology. That explains it. Treat some patients for a while." Unfortunately some MDs do have this attitude. If you have no clinical practice you don't know anything. Which is rather like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that if you haven't lifted weights you don't know anything.The patient who receives this plastic/metal contraption is Mare Winningham, who is quite good, and who is exactly right for the part. She's young, but not too young. Pretty, but not heartbreakingly so. Winsome but not pathetic. After the operation, when it is clear that she will recover, she lies in bed scared to death, frightened because if she goes to sleep the heart might stop. What a nice touch, and nothing much is made of it.That brings us to the aspect of the film which many people will probably find daunting. It's slow. Nobody shouts angrily at anyone. There is no fist fight. There isn't an underground chamber where comatose bodies are suspended from cables and their organs harvested.The central figure in the drama is the heart itself and we hardly know anything about it. We have no idea how it works. We hardly even SEE it.We get to see a lot of other surgical-type things though -- angiograms and that sort of stuff, the kind that Linda Blair underwent in the course of "The Exorcist." Interesting details about an operation in which somebody gets an artificial valve. I always wondered how they got that little ring in there and now I have some idea. The sutures in this case are too long and Southerland casually rebukes his scrub nurse with a soft wisecrack, "What do you want me to do, sew it up from the other room?" So there's no blood, no violence, no sex, nobody poisons anyone else or does anyone in a laundry room. Instead of grand opera we're given a small leisurely story of a successful artificial heart implant. The Big Themes we might expect from a script written by a committee of MBAs are only suggested. "Will I be the same?" "The religious people are after me." The extension of those glimmers of doubt or of definition is left up to the viewer.Recommended -- if you're patient.

As near as I can tell, this movie is based directly on Dr. Denton Cooley's career. Dr. Cooley WAS the first doctor to use an artificial heart in a patient whose heart was unrepairable on the operating table. He was chastised for doing this at the time without approval and so he started his own hospital, The Texas Heart Institute. This movie closely follows the circumstance of that operation that transpired in the 1960's long before the first APPROVED artificial heart was used in Barney Clark in December of 1982. I remember the time well as I had to wait an extra day for Dr. Cooley to operate on me as he was delayed in getting back to Houston after Mr. Clarks operation. This is one movie based on closely related facts.

This movie is so understated and yet so powerful and moving it took me by surprise. The three principle actors (Sutherland, Goldblum, Winningham) do a fantastic, believable job of bringing their characters to life. I was quite impressed with the writing, directing, and, as I've said, acting. The only thing that made me watch this movie, at first, was that I am a fan of Donald Sutherland. Once I sat through it I could not stop thinking about it. The quiet power Sutherland brings to his character is a fine example of an actor really "getting" his part Jeff Goldblum's handling of the part of the brash and slightly off center researcher is one of his best performances. Mare Winningham's quiet desperation as the heart patient is truly believable and heart felt without going over the top. Everyone in this movie really seemed to fit right in, giving the movie a "real-life" feel. An all around well done movie. Too bad it's not on DVD.