Coma
Essentially, “Coma” is a film in which a prime example of innovative private enterprise is ruined by a pushy feminist who is too inqusitive for her own good and eventually has to be saved from certain eivsceration by Michael Douglas.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it and perhaps a more interesting one than regurgitating my best essay on paranoid cinema of the 1970s. Indeed, given Michael Crichton’s recent lurch to the compacent conservative Right in his fiction, he might be more sympathetic to such an interpretation than would have been the case in 1977. But I think the intention at the time was clearly meant to be progressive - exposing the practices of medicine in a capitalist system while telling a story with a strong female protagonist.
In some respects, this works quite well. Although the revelation that a hospital might induce coma in order to sell organs isn’t especially shocking or surprising, it’s a good hook for a conspiracy thriller and an interesting diversion from the old “government is trying to kill us” plot so common in the genre at the time. Indeed, following this we were encouraged to become paranoid about anything and everything - astronauts in “Capricorn One”, nuclear power in “The China Syndrome”, aliens in the godawful “Hangar 18″, religion in “Split Image”, adverts in “Looker”, bees in “The Swarm” and, er, piranha in “Piranha”.
There’s also a strong female protagonist in the shape of Genevieve Bujold, an excellent actress who hasn’t had a decent role for years. At least, she’s strong for about 100 minutes until the end when she begins to behave like one of the more cerebrally challenged contestants on “Big Brother” and has to be rescued by her boyfriend. But generally, she’s so plucky and likeable that she keeps the film going even when it descends into Saturday children’s matinee cliches and takes ten minutes to explain turns in the plot which we’ve grasped straightaway.
But it’s lively and sometimes exciting with Crichton showing a grasp of cinematic suspense which he subsequently demonstrated in the excellent “The Great Train Robbery” but lost very soon after - if you’ve seen “Looker” or “Physical Evidence”, you’ll know what I mean. He marshals an interesting cast well, managing to stop Richard Widmark from going too far over the top, although he can’t do anything with Elizabeth Ashley who looks pretty comatose herself. He also works well with two cinematographers, creating different atmospheres for the hospital and the Jefferson Institute, a creepy joint in the country where lots of bodies hang in suspended animation. The latter location is shot by Gerald Hirschfield and he does a fine job in his two or three scenes, all geometric lines and eerie blue light. There is, however, nothing to be done with that ending even though it follows a neat little linguistic twist which is so simple that it’ll have you kicking yourself.
Warner Brothers’ R1 DVD is perfectly acceptable although there are no significant extras and the flip side is taken up with a pan/scan version that is, as ever, redundant.