THE next time you’re in the former Soviet republic Ukraine and find yourself in need of immediate brain surgery, look up Henry Marsh.
He’s the 58-year-old British neurosurgeon who regularly visits Ukraine to treat patients whose chances of survival would otherwise be slim, or nonexistent.
His journeys to Ukraine are, Marsh says, “like going back in a time machine,” to a health-care system that is “broken down [and] completely bankrupt.” (Kind of like in the US, no?)
One of Marsh’s visits to Ukraine is chronicled in “The English Surgeon,” a documentary directed and produced by Geoffrey Smith.
It concentrates on two of Marsh’s patients, a man who agrees to stay awake as doctors drill into his brain (he’s OK afterward) and a girl with a brain tumor who is worse off after Marsh takes his knives to her.
Smith seems intent on turning Marsh into a folk hero. That’s fine, I suppose, although it would have been informative to take a closer look at Ukraine’s medical nightmare — its causes and its prognosis.
In any event, be warned that the surgery on the gentleman mentioned above is shown in unsettling detail.
In Ukrainian and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 93 minutes. Not rated (unpleasant images). At Cinema Village, 12th Street, east of Fifth Avenue.