Patch Adams: Healing more important than cure

This may be an old comedy, but its relevance is timeless. The message this film sends across is that love, laughter and affection can go a long distance in healing a person more than the usual doses of medicine. Well, there is a great difference between ‘cure’ and ‘healing’. A physical disease may be cured by the medicines prescribed by the physician. However, there is no guarantee that the person is healed. Healing has to do with the whole person and not just his or her physical ailment. Even a person with multiple physical ailments can be a completely healed person when he/she is completely free from within.

Director: Tom Shadyac

Film Clip

That is where love, laughter and affection come into play. Here is Hunter Adams, nicknamed Patch Adams (Robin Williams) who learns a great lesson that the only way to forget one’s problems is to get involved in the lives of others and bring them happiness and joy. Hence, he makes a life decision to become a doctor so that he can come closer to those suffering and in pain and ‘heal’ them. Of course, the traditionalists at the medical college and hospital where he is studying have a problem. However, Adams pursues his goal with a single-minded devotion to bring about and spread healing.

The film, no doubt, stirs us to think about the present-day medication system which focuses largely on the disease rather than the person. For most doctors, the patient is just another ‘case’ and no more a person. Such treatment can only make the person sicker than bring about healing. The ‘great lesson’ medical students learn in hospitals that they must be detached from their patients and treat them just as cases with diseases, is unfortunate. This way you create doctors who are robots and not human beings.

Great film! Well, Munna Bai MBBS has been inspired by this film.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ

Bharat Stores: Swept by market economy!

The impact of globalisation and liberalisation on small scale industries and businessmen has been a known factor. Series of researches and studies have analysed these developments. However, not many films have dealt with this subject. The national-award winning Kannada film Bharat Stores seems a very realistic depiction in the recent past, dealing with this theme. 

Director P. Sheshadri

Film clip

The film is basically about a shopkeeper Govinda Shetty who is honest and dedicated to his family trade. However, with the rise of market and free trade economy post liberalisation process, he suffers a huge loss steadily, till he is completely outplayed by the growing mall culture. His inability to move with the changing trends, or refusal to compromise with the system, does him great harm, till one day he bites the dust unable to recover.

The film, with some fine performances (especially the protagonist Dattatreya) and exquisite camera work by Mahendra Simha raises several crucial questions. Is it wrong for people to frequent malls when they know that they can shop all that they need under one roof? Should malls be restricted to allow small traders to also do some business? Is it a fault of Mr Shetty that he could not upgrade himself like many others with the current trends in business? Was he so old-fashioned to not see that he could be decimated?

There are no easy answers. However, Bharat Stores, the shop, with its fading light and near empty space towards the end of the film stands as a powerful symbol of the gale of globalisation and liberalisation that is driving farmers to suicides, killing small scale trades and businesses and driving scores of families that were dependent on the street corner shops into penury.

Hats off to director P. Sheshadri.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ