EL MAR AJENO (FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS)

Spain, 2010, 107 minutes, Colour.
Eduardo Noriega, Belen Rueda, Angie Cepeda.
Directed by Oskar Santos Gomez.

For the Good of Others is a film about hospitals, surgery, healing – but with a touch of mystical theme.

Set in Madrid, the film looks like many episodes of television series such as ER. However, the issue of healing and miraculous powers transcends the ordinary ER kind of story.

Eduardo Noriega portrays a doctor in charge of a pain unit and questions his patients about their threshold of pain. His daughter becomes ill and he is concerned about her illness. However, he is a generally detached doctor, good at his work, but advising his staff not to become involved in people’s lives. He is separated from his wife. He takes care of his doctor father.

When one of his pain patients commits suicide while she is pregnant, her partner threatens the life of the doctor. What happens, explained gradually and generally later, is that there is a continuity, a kind of pay it forward, of a capacity for healing but it requires the sacrifice of the healer who finds that they cannot heal someone they love and therefore must pass on the gift.

The film was produced by Alejandro Amenabar who made such films as Open Your Eyes, The Others and El Mar Adentro.

1.The title of the film, the Spanish title? Emphases on good, on evil? Medical stories? Illness, pain, healing?

2.The hospital and its detail, the pain unit, surgery, the wards, intensive care unit, corridors, the roof? The ER look?

3.The homes, the roads and the countryside? The musical score, highly orchestrated?

4.The character of Diego, as a competent doctor, following in his father’s footsteps, not wanting to be like him? Talking with his father, the tests for prostate cancer, his father’s collapse, hospitalisation, his death? Diego staying at his father’s house? Feeling helpless? His separation from Pilar? Her being a nurse, their avoiding each other in the hospital? Their daughter, teenager, her teenage girl reactions, talking about trauma? Her sexual encounter with Juanjo? Gonorrhea, communicating it to him? Her father puzzled? Her mother knowing? His detached view of service to patients, his advice to Juanjo especially about the old woman eating pizza before she died? Getting Juanjo to look at all the people who needed his detached care?

5.The introduction, the video, the range of patients, the nature of their illnesses, their age, the threshold of pain?

6.Armand and Sarah, Sarah not wanting Armand to know she had multiple sclerosis? Pregnant, the overdose? The injury to the foetus heart? The tests, her going into coma?

7.Armand, his devotion to her, his attacking Diego, apologising, shooting him, healing him, killing himself? Passing on the capacity for healing? The flashbacks of explanation, Sarah’s sister, the hit-run, her death? Her wanting to die, unable to help Sarah, passing on the power to Armand? The healer and the sense of helplessness, the need to die to pass on this gift for others?

8.Diego, seemingly dead, coming to life, changing his view of life, walking around the hospital, looking with new eyes at the multiple patients? The encounter with Carlos, Carlos’s pessimism, the amputations? Wanting to get back with his wife, her resistance? Smoking pot? The change, the healing?

9.The illness and complications for the daughter? The mother keeping watch? The medical issues? Juanjo and his concern? Her getting worse, Pilar’s response, Diego’s response? Sarah intervening and healing?

10.Isabel, coming to identify Armand’s body, the shock of twenty years’ marriage and his behaviour, wanting to become pregnant, unable? Her drinking? Talking to Diego, confiding in him? Healed or not? The relationship? In Sarah’s house, Sarah’s arrival, asking her to take care of the baby, giving the baby a name? Sarah going on mission?

11.Carlos, his life, angers, wife, Diego cutting his throat, death – healing?

12.Diego, at peace, killing himself, the self-sacrifice?

13.Themes of illness, pain, mystery, healing, bearing illness for others? The absence of God and the transcendent? A humanist spirituality?