Initially, I wasn’t sure how to categorize the movie. At first I thought it might be a musical about body mutilation, but then it got a bit darker, and stranger, and quite frightening.
I guess I would best categorize SiKCO as a kind of horror movie with SF tropes and moments of absurd comedy.
It kind of meanders for a horror flick, and a lot of characters get introduced throughout the story (and yes, a lot of bad things happen to them). The one character who remains unharmed — except for a painful interview he conducts with an extremely smug French couple — is the “film-maker” Michael Moore.
The framing device for this terrifying piece of fiction is that Michael Moore is a documentary maker. The CGI experts that created this sympathetic character are geniuses — yes, the protagonist is quite horrible to look, but you can really feel his humanity coming through those pixels, so you definitely sympathize with his want to help people.
And boy, in this setting, people need help. I mean, in this movie, if you’re ill, old or poor, you do not want to need a doctor. Basically, think of the HMOs as a horde of zombies, and anyone needing healthcare as brain-food on the hoof. As (an ex-) doctor, I was quite horrified to think that those organizations would spend so much of their time and effort denying care — clearly something is rotten in Denmark.
By contrast, the protagonist visits several countries that have universal healthcare. Part of it is even filmed in my hometown, of London, Ontario. This segment of the movie is fairly accurate, though there wasn’t much mention of efforts in Canada to privatize medicine. (Mostly unsuccessful so far, thank god.)
On the whole, I found SiCKO a disturbing and somewhat moving horror/comedy, though the ending, where a bunch of Americans are treated by Cuban doctors seemed a little too far fetched to believe. I bet it drives some people nuts though.
I give this four out of five peyote buttons!
Thanks to Archer at Lawyerworldland for suggesting I watch it. | Photo of the evil HMO Directory by brian cors