‘Rounding’: Film Review | Tribute 2022

When resident physician James (Namir Smallwood) takes an acting class to improve his bed manners, this thought reinforces him, calling him a “cheating”. The professor (David Cromer) gently pushes back. “Don’t your patients lie sometimes?” He is reading. “They can,” James replies. “Their bodies usually aren’t.”

The irony is that James will spend much of rounding Obsessed with the idea that a certain body might be, if not lying to it, at least telling the whole truth, while his own body betrays the fiction it says, namely, that it is perfectly fine and in control. . That tension makes for a tense, sometimes terrifying thriller that’s hard to ignore, though what he’s trying to accomplish with all that energy isn’t always so obvious.

rounding It starts with one of the most traumatic moments in James’ life, when he helps his beloved patient (Cheryl Lynn Bruce) commit suicide, which he says he wants, only to change his mind a few seconds later, he falls. A heart attack as James passes out under the emotional weight of what he’s done. Months later, still unable to move, James arranges a transfer to a small-town hospital in hopes of finally getting his fresh start.

At first, it seems to be just the change he needed: he’s still training and seems to be enjoying the cold, snowy air. He has impressed his new boss (Michael Pots, very knowledgeable) with his ambitions and experience, and gets along well with his new hires (including San FranciscoMax Lipchitz and Kelly O’Sullivan).

But when 19-year-old Helen (Never Rarely Sometimes AlwaysSidney Flanigan) is hospitalized with a severe asthma attack, James realizes his symptoms don’t match. Her confusion avoids embarrassment and, ultimately, outright obsession, especially after Helen’s mother (Rebecca Spence) begins to pull away from her fixation.

Directed by Alex Thompson (San Francisco), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher Thompson, uses his eye for detail to draw the viewer into James’ rapidly deteriorating mental space. He recognized that residency is a difficult time for any doctor, and around James we see others who are also drinking coffee or worrying about painful matters.

But the already stressful setup of James’ workday becomes even more tense in a messy, relentless rhythm that leaves neither him nor us to breathe. Violent dreams (or perhaps hallucinations) begin to haunt him in dark corridors and snowy paths. Painful memories surge through flashes until they accumulate so many at the same time that the present becomes difficult to notice. At its most terrifying, the film recalls the sick despair of 2021 Holy come.

Instead of eating, James spends his lunch hours on eyebrow charts and appears to fall asleep only when he accidentally falls asleep, falling into a disoriented state hours or perhaps days later. When James hurt his leg, he still walked on it, trying to ignore the pain that became so unbearable that he couldn’t wear socks without breathing. What at first seems like a remarkable dedication to his work turns out to be more like a self-inflicted wound or a self-punishment. People around her notice her intensity and in an increasingly urgent tone ask if she is okay. He always claims to be and is less and less convincing. Smallwood’s work alternates between white-skinned groans and dead-eyed weariness, giving the impression of a man so tense that inadequate breathing can stop him forever.

No matter how hard he tries, James can’t shake the painful feeling that something is wrong with Helen’s story. In its structure, James’ arc isn’t all that different from that of a murder detective who sacrifices everything he’s got and pushes all limits to get on with the case, only to find he’s become a little bit in an attempt to catch the man. monster. One for yourself. rounding He finally offers satisfaction to her and to us by resolving the main questions of the narrative: about what is really going on with Ellen and what happened to James in the past that shook her so deeply.

გრამ But yes rounding Details are sharp, your overall image remains blurrier than it should. After all the answers, it’s still hard to say what we want to do with them: that medicine is a terrible field? Does that unbearable stress force a person to do strange things? That people are more complex than their schemas seem? This is a mystery that not even James has solved. However, as an experience in which a person completely deflates under pressure, rounding It takes a wild and volatile ride.