- published: 19 Apr 2016
- views: 1334
Coma is a 1978 suspense film based on the novel of the same name by Robin Cook. The film rights were acquired by director Michael Crichton, and the movie was produced by Martin Erlichmann for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The cast included Geneviève Bujold, Michael Douglas, Elizabeth Ashley, Richard Widmark, and Rip Torn. Among the actors in smaller roles are Tom Selleck and Ed Harris.
The film is in color with stereo sound and runs for 113 minutes. It is notable for the intense paranoia which pervades the film, similar to other films of the 1970s such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Conversation, The Stepford Wives, and earlier, Rosemary's Baby.
Susan Wheeler (Geneviève Bujold) is a surgical resident at Boston Memorial Hospital, a close analogue of Massachusetts General Hospital. Wheeler is devastated when her best friend is pronounced brain dead and ends up in a coma after minor surgery at the hospital.
Looking at the records, Susan finds that over the previous year a number of other fit young people have ended up the same way. She comes across two similarities to the cases: they all took place in the same operating theatre, and all the comatose bodies were moved to a remote facility called the Jefferson Institute. She continues to investigate, increasingly alone, starting to wonder if she can trust even her own boyfriend, Dr Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas).
In medicine, a coma (from the Greek κῶμα koma, meaning deep sleep) is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than six hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as comatose. Although, according to the Glasgow Coma Scale, a person with confusion is considered to be in the mildest coma.
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects. The process of filmmaking has developed into an art form and industry.
Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating – or indoctrinating – citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer.
Films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers perceive motion due to a psychological effect called beta movement.