AllMovie

A type of film dealing with doctors, nurses, patients, etc. and set in a general hospital or a private clinic. A variety of characters that are the subject of illness, suffering, emotional problems and moral choices provides filmmakers with an ideal ground for dramatic or melodramatic situations and raw emotions. Sometimes the films concern the workings of a specific hospital, as in the pilot for the TV series ER, while others focus on the work of one doctor -- Awakenings. In the hospital dramas, there are usually a lot of inter-office politics meshed into life-saving dashes to the emergency room. They tend to address institutional and topical issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and sex-change operations. The film following a single doctor commonly concerns an innovative new technique or a pioneering medicant in the midst of an ignorant world. In Charly, a new medicine is discovered to reverse neurological damage, and the film delves deeply into the ramifications of this life change by examining the relationship between a doctor and the first test patient.