Movie Review: The English Surgeon: One Doctor’s Personal Mission to Save Lives in Ukraine 

Review by Gerti

This movie is a real rarity – an exciting documentary. “The English Surgeon” tells the story of neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who recently penned a book ironically titled “Do No Harm”, which tells the story of his long career performing brain surgery in England and elsewhere. I call the title ironic, because much of the book in fact involves the harm he does patients, whether they live or die.

Those who have read the book will find the movie more interesting, as it shows us the doddering old man behind the stories. Marsh is a middle-aged fellow who likes to work with wood and take used medical equipment to his friend in the Ukraine. The drama only begins in the Ukraine, where Marsh has gone for 17 years, as we see how desperately that country and its citizens need the British cast-offs. Marsh takes part in clinic days in Kiev, where people line the hallways in order to sit for a few minutes before Marsh with their x-rays on a light box.

It is very affecting to see him tell patients their fate. Although we mostly follow the case of one young man named Marion who is able to get an operation and is saved, it is the other mini-cases which are heart-breaking. Marsh and his fellow doctor from the Ukraine, whom he calls Igor, debate whether to tell a 23-year-old beauty that she has only 2 years left to live, but first she will go blind. In the end, they send her to get her mother, so she doesn’t receive the terrible news alone.

Another scene of wrenching human tragedy involves a grandmother who brings the x-ray film of her grandchild, but the great English doctor has no hope for her. “What can we do?” she tearfully asks through a translator. Marsh says that they must prepare themselves that the child will die. It is too late. That is the real tragedy here – that many of these patients could have had a better prognosis, but the government-run process to get x-rayed and then see a doctor is so lengthy that their surgical window has closed. This peek at medicine in the former Soviet state is both fascinating and frightening at the same time.

In short, just as Marsh’s book is a terrifying glimpse at the limits of medicine, so is this look by filmmaker Geoffrey Smith at the efforts Marsh has made in the Ukraine. There are glimpses of the humanity of the Ukrainian people, as when Marsh and Igor visit the mother of a little girl who is now dead, but was wrecked by brain surgery. There is video of her before, a sweet and shy child with a large tumor on her face, and after surgery, where she is virtually helpless but yet alive. They visit her village, and her mother, friends and neighbors set out a spread of food and drink for them. It is obvious how deeply all of them are affected by the visit. But the most enduring picture is as Marsh sits alone by the child’s grave, with the gravestone a sculpture of her face. It is then that the viewer can truly see that Marsh regarded at least one patient as a real human being, and feels her loss deeply. This film will make you cry and give thanks that you are in the USA.