永生的海拉

这部电影是对The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks这本书的具体演绎，我阅读原著的时候头脑中构建的图像就和电影里所呈现的毫无二致。然而电影有两个问题：首先它太戏剧化了，部分情节讲故事的感觉太严重，让人一看就觉得假，一看就觉得出戏。第二个问题是它对原著的改编不合理，有的地方过分忠实原著了，就像删去原著里面所有讨论的内容只留下故事来。这两个问题使得它有点像动态的书籍插图。

然而ILHL的演绎还是非常成功的，虽然看起来导演对视觉语言的把握也是有点刻意、不自然。让我很惊讶的是，我不需要任何线索，看到人物一出场就能知道他是谁，并且这些角色的演绎和我阅读的时候所想象的完全一致。比如HeLa女士，这个演员简直就是从照片里走出来的。还有Deborra，完全把底层黑人妇女演活了，很难想象这是一个非科班出身的脱口秀主持人的表演。只是Oprah的口音有点怪怪的南方风格，或许美国北方黑人也这么说话？

白院士说，ILHL的原著是“女性主义视角”，但电影更像是少数族裔文化视角。无论如何，本片作为一个非虚构作品的改编，还是相当成功的，虽远达不到经典的水平，也堪称佳作了。

P.S. 白院士说原著既有女性主义视角，也有少数族裔视角。

I have to say that I was not moved at all. They seem to care about only money and kept going after financial compensations, not justice. Any family without a mother will have problems around it, no matter how the mother died or whether she turned into an immortal cell line or not. So save the pity. I wish the movie could educate more on the medical regulations back then and today. The movie did not detail on the drug tests they did on their mother or sister and should have spent more time on it instead of having Oprah showing off her ability of playing hysteric. These people have very little basic biology/medical knowledge and it can be extremely hard to teach them and make sure they stay objective about science and knowledge. They are after the money. They don't understand medicine or science. That's it.

If no consent was required from patient back then, they cannot sue Johns Hopkins.
If it's just about donating a little cancer tissue for research, I don't think, even today, the patient gets any specific financial compensation for that. It does not matter what your little biopsy turns out to be in 50 years or longer. I don't see a lot of other unhumane drug tests described in the movie. It's all about Oprah's emotions, not history or science.

Oprah's performance is too dramatic. If the movie is about racism, then make it about racism. And that did not seem to be the center of the movie either.

Johns Hopkins did mis-reported the name of the patient in the first place, and called it Helen Lane. (For quite a while during my research career, I thought it was Helen...) They should do something about it. And I feel sorry about it, too.

When HBO first released the movie, I thought they were going to make a very objective documentary instead of this sh*t. Isn't it true that HBO is good at showing good documentaries? What happened to them wasting money on this...

Just want to be fair from the perspective of a medical researcher. Please don't take anything personally.