The Big Sick: Best Film To Tell The Truth About Having a Sick Loved One
The Big Sick, the film comedian Kumail Nanjiani delivered with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, did not win Best Original Screenplay at the 90th Academy Awards. That honor went to the searing and timely Get Out, and rightfully so, given the award is meant for stories that spring from the mind fully-formed, like the goddess Athena. The Big Sick is a more dramatic retelling of real life — Gordon’s battle with adult Still’s disease (also known as the scariest thing I saw in medical residency) — and Nanjiani’s awkward bonding with her parents — difficult enough without the object of your affection in a coma. But the film deserves recognition as an extremely rare portrait of life as the loved ones of the ailing.
Like ethnic and religious minorities, families of the ill and injured often condense to stereotypes onscreen. Medical shows abound, yet the families of patients seem to fall into one of two camps; immaculately dressed and concerned yet reasonable, or absent/completely unhinged/drug-addicted. -This even occurred in the venerable “ER”. The audience always knew whether the dad, daughter, or spouse was “good” or “bad”.
With the luxury of extra storytelling time, The Big Sick takes on an unknown and less obviously cinematic story; the drama of families struggling to cope with the unknown, with wanting to talk to the doctor, with wishing the doctor would go away, with horror, with hope, with the complete upending of life and home and routine.
Nanjiani’s otherness as a Pakistani immigrant and Uber driver who romanced Gordon, is a metaphor for the alien feeling of staying in unfamiliar surroundings while your child clings to life in the hospital. While dealing with the prospect of losing their child in an upended Moebius twist in the circle of life, actors Ray Romano and Holly Hunter stumble through the machinations of “meet the parents” with Nanjiani.
Without their daughter mediating their interactions, and without the familiar, protective trappings of their home, marital difficulties come to light; Hunter, as the mom, snaps in the middle of a comedy show she is attending in an attempt at normalcy. Meanwhile, Nanjiani loses his cool privately, in the drive-through line at a fast-food joint. As he wreaks havoc on his surroundings, he echoes the frustrations of many a spouse or parent stripped of their agency. They are unable to help their loved one, feeling guilty at the slightest hint of pleasure because someone is hooked up to a ventilator and Zosyn and dopamine, catheterized and cannulated.
Medical stories on screen favor the sudden, the dramatic and the quickly resolved. These lead to a preponderance of stories about emergency surgeries and gunshot wounds. Families can easily understand a torn aorta or a ruptured appendix. “Ma’am, we have to repair what’s broken.” I did not envy the rheumatologists in my hospital who struggled to explain adult Still’s to the horrified Los Angeles family who didn’t understand why their son, tall and muscular, lay fighting a fever and organ failure with every specialist within paging range puzzling over him.
These medical stories, the ones real families experience every day, evolve over days and weeks. A fever comes down; there is hope. An eye twitches less frequently; there is despair. The Big Sick was the first time I could recall seeing this insidious wearing away of the human spirit, psychological exfoliation by hospital if you will, on a screen of any kind. When Nanjiani bombed his comedy set, breaking down and talking about his sick girlfriend to boos, I could not help but wonder how many patients’ partners had bombed presentations, sales pitches, or designs while trying to keep it together and carry on to the outside world as norma,l in that most stoic American way.
The Big Sick brings Gordon home as she was in real life, still doing physical rehabilitation and unsteady on her feet. This is a truth in itself, as patients do not pop up unscathed from devastating illnesses, (sorry, Cynthia Nixon in “ER”). Hospitalizations are messy, protracted, and inflict long tails of damage, for patients and for families. The Big Sick reminds us that the rude clerk or that terrible comedian might be counting down the hours until she can run back to the hospital to keep vigil, for yet another night.
