The Passage

Amazingly to me, this film appeared on cable very often when my child was an infant with congenital heart defects. The makeup giving Mare Winningham the look of oxygen deprivation was very realistic and gives the viewer a picture of the "dusky" skin tone of some heart patients. The restraint of the Vrain/Carol relationship was right on, and the peripheral but agonized part of the parent was poignantly depicted by Carol's father. The film is almost a relief from the typical "dramatized" film about illness. Heart difficulties are inherently dramatic to the lay person (perhaps not to doctors, though) and need no melodramatic treatment. The understatement, the lack of statement all serve the subject well. The cold, orderly world of the (urban, state-of-the-art)hospital that contains so much extraordinary work comes across beautifully in this film. I'm glad others appreciate it.

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.

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!

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 well-worth watching and I highly recommend it for many of the reasons from others listed here. As another reviewer "tdilts9219" noted, it appears based on the famous Texas heart center in real life. Surprisingly in 1998, the fictional 1981 plot came even closer to a real life situation. In Oxford England, Aug 1998, a renowned heart surgeon Stephen Westaby placed heart replacement pump AB-180 into a young woman Julie Mills to save her life. The AB-180 was invented by George Magovern, a US inventor and has the same key property as the heart replacement in the movie. Add a few of innovations from Jeff Goldblum's fictional inventor, and AB-180 would be a match for the movie. Wait another decade, and it might be another case of sci-fi preceding reality. (source Reader's Digest, April 2000)