Something the Lord Made (2004)

IMDb plot summary: A dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

Directed by Joseph Sargent. Starring Alan Rickman, Mos Def, and Kyra Sedgwick.

Something the Lord Made is a TV biopic about the first cardiac surgery ever performed. Alan Rickman plays scientist Alfred Blalock who heads up the research, and Mos Def plays his assistant Vivien Thomas, who turns out to be just as talented, if not more than Blalock, but is consistently overlooked because he is African-American. Cardiac surgery is one of those things that obviously I knew in my head had to have been innovated at some point in the recent past, but I didn't really know anything about how it went down, so it was interesting to see the obstacles in the way of making it happen and how it really was presumed to be eternally beyond the bounds of medicine. I did find it extremely distracting, although, yes, historically accurate, how heavy the focus was on animal experimentation. It was pretty upsetting to watch them deliberately diminishing a dog's oxygen supply so they could then figure out how to fix it. While that was absolutely part of the history, it definitely undercuts the film's attempted "hurray for science" attitude throughout. That makes it tough to recommend, although the story itself is an interesting one, told in decent biopic format with good performances.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Something the Lord Made < Frank

Something the Lord Made > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Something the Lord Made > Sullivan's Travels

Something the Lord Made > Get Shorty

Something the Lord Made > Senna

Something the Lord Made > After the Wedding

Something the Lord Made > Safety Not Guaranteed

Something the Lord Made > Le Week-End

Something the Lord Made < True Romance

Something the Lord Made > Zelig

Something the Lord Made < The Elephant Man

Final spot: #1795 out of 3571, or 50%.