Gray's Anatomy

1997, Movie, NR, 80 mins

GRAY'S ANATOMY
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Resolved: Spalding Gray is an artist. How else could he turn 80 of minutes of whinging and kvetching into an intermittently entertaining piece of theater? This time out, Gray teams with director Steven Soderbergh to present his experiences dealing with the nightmarish prospect of eye surgery. Tormented by increasingly distorted vision in one eye, he's diagnosed with an retinal disorder known as a "macula pucker." Gray must make a decision: lose his sight or go into the hospital and have his pucker scraped. Neither option appeals to him, so the relentless raconteur first explores a few alternatives to conventional surgery, including a visit to a Native American sweat lodge, an all raw-vegetable diet and a meeting with a Philippine psychic surgeon who operates with his bare, bloodied hands. Abandoning the minimalist approaches taken by Jonathan Demme and Nick Broomfield (who directed Gray's previous films SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA and MONSTER IN A BOX, respectively), Soderbergh lays it on a bit thick, capturing Gray in front of a variety of backdrops and under a whole spectrum of colored lights. The overall effect is a bit distracting, but given how long our man manages to put off checking into the hospital, it's more than welcome. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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