Dr. Bethune

The film begins with Bethune's death in China in 1939 and tells his story through flashbacks and interviews conducted by a reporter researching the doctor's life. With money from his wealthy new wife Frances (Helen Mirren), Bethune buys his own practice, which he promptly runs into bankruptcy by refusing to collect from patients unable to pay. He becomes an agitator for socialized medicine in Canada, which earns him a reputation as a "red." He also begins to run his marriage into the ground with his relentless drinking and womanizing that, along with an inability to suffer fools gladly, damage other personal and professional relationships throughout his life. Inspired by the Spanish Republicans' battle against Franco and Hitler, Bethune goes to Spain to lend his surgical expertise to the struggle. However, he alienates fellow doctors with his impatient perfectionism and is firmly, though politely, asked to leave the country. He finds new challenges in China, enduring a long, arduous journey, carrying enough medical supplies to equip a hospital, to link up with Mao's army, then battling Japanese invaders. Again going against the local doctors, who want Bethune to travel to field care facilities and train doctors on-site, Bethune sets up a central teaching hospital and has the doctors come to him. However, it's his turn to apologize when his teaching hospital is destroyed by the Japanese. He makes amends by designing a complete portable field hospital that can be carried on two mules. He also achieves a new level of personal satisfaction by making a direct contribution to the struggle against fascism, and his vanity is fed by the reverence in which he is held by his Chinese comrades. However, a minor surgical wound, left untreated, leads to gangrene that takes Bethune's life in the field.

Written in 1942 by Ted Allan, one of Canada's most esteemed writers, who also benefited by knowing Bethune personally, BETHUNE's script shows its age in discreetly sidestepping the less savory aspects of the doctor's personality. At the same time, however, it refuses to build him into a conventional Hollywood-style hero. Darryl Zanuck was supposed to have made the film at that time but apparently lost interest. He was probably skittish about Bethune's communist leanings, but it's just as likely he was dissuaded by the fact that Bethune's accomplishment was lifelong, rather than based around a single event that would have better fit a standard studio scenario.

Bethune was mocked and labeled a red for championing a state medical system that is now the envy of the world. He joined the correct side early in Spain only to be tossed out late. He saw what he thought would be his crowning achievement--his teaching hospital in China--reduced to rubble. His wife left him not once but twice, fed up as much by his arrogance and egotism as by his unending infidelities. Emotionally, the film is buoyed only by Bethune's irrepressible high spirits in Sutherland's excellent performance. However, that only makes Bethune's suicidal refusal of treatment for his wound all the more problematic.

Allan's CITIZEN KANE-style approach is appropriate given his enigmatic subject, but this is a story with no "Rosebud." What there is to be learned is that idealism is a dangerous thing that can consume those who possess it, however admirable their goals. By not making Bethune's life into something that it was not, Borsos and Allan are to be commended. But what unnecessarily works against the film is its almost nonstop talk. After all the discussions, arguments, meetings, lectures, and teaching sessions, it seems a wonder that Bethune had time and energy left over for a life of any kind, much less the extraordinary life he seems to have led and of which we see far too little. BETHUNE is a worthy film on a worthwhile subject, but it's inescapably more an obligation than a pleasure. (Adult situations, violence.) leave a comment