First of all, I clarify that I am a recently graduated doctor (I am in my residency period) and I found this movie by chance after so many complimentary comments. I don't understand the praising at this... movie. Or experiment. Or uninspired collage. Probably that's the best definition. There are very long takes where practically nothing happens. There are procedures showed in "medias res"; That is, when it has already started and without any kind of explanation about what and why. The scientific talk (the rare one there is) has already started and with only vagueness, since the audio (messy and ugly) is just loose ramblings from doctors and nurses. There are extreme close-up shots that add absolutely nothing. It's almost two hours of nothing. Others might have loved it, I feel like I wasted my time.

Considering that once upon a time it was thought that simply touching the beating heart would cause it to stop (and thus cause death), it's quite staggering to realise the amount of intervention that the human body can take, actually.

Not for the squeamish, obviously, but for me the scenes included here of inserting a plastic lens into an eye (presumably after cataract surgery), and literally screwing a metal rod into a spine (presumably to correct curvature) were amazing demonstrations of now-routine applications of technology - not to mention the ubiquitous use of keyhole surgery, and micro-cameras and instruments.

As a documentary, this dispenses with third-person voiceover, so one just has to infer context from the comments of the medical staff and patients as they go about and undergo the various processes, and you just have to "go with it" (or turn away).

Fascinating.