Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease

Colour, 35mm
Poland, 2000, 99 min
Section: Tribute to Krzysztof Zanussi

Synopsis

Tomasz, a sixty-year-old doctor, is both cynical and pragmatic. He is earning a little extra money during the making of a movie about St. Bernard who saved a thief from an angry mob, promising that faith in God would help him accept his death sentence. Later, Tomasz helps a patient end his suffering with an overdose of morphine. He subsequently finds out that he, too, is afflicted with a fatal disease. His ex-wife offers him a large sum of money for treatment in Paris but his lung cancer is past the operating stage. Tomasz returns to work at the clinic and his atheism begins to be shaken by those questions one commonly asks as death draws near. While looking for answers he ends up evaluating the meaning of faith. Admitting its existence helps prevent him from taking a lethal dose of medicine to escape the pain. There are many people who counsel him concerning this dilemma: colleagues, his friend the priest and above all Marek, a medic deeply interested in the ethical aspects of medicine as it touches the mysteries of life and death. Marek is made to feel easier about performing an autopsy ordered on Tomasz’s body by his awareness that the deceased had accepted death as a natural part of eternal existence.