20 Film: Extreme Measures
Extreme Measures is a 1996 film directed by Michael Apted and starring Hugh Grant, Gene Hackman and Sarah Jessica Parker. A young doctor confronts a famous colleague when he discovers the truth behind his work. In the movie, there are police officers/security guards named Hare and Burke. In real life in 1820s Edinburgh, there were two men named William Hare and William Burke who supplied human cadavers to medical schools until it was discovered that the that the ones they hadn’t stolen from graveyards they had murdered themselves.
Films for this class are streamed through the HCC library’s portal. You will need to log in by using the same username/password you use for other services (such as logging into Canvas).
Consider this:
- If we are either our minds (or souls) or our bodies as the seats of our “real” identities, does either declaration do justice to everything that we are? Are we are or are we not “double” creatures? In what does our identity reside? Just what do I mean when I say “me”?
- If you were paralyzed like Hugh Grant’s character in the film, what would you do to regain mobility? Would it be “anything” ?
- At the end of the film, Hugh Grant receives a package with all of the medical research enclosed in it. What do you think he does with it once the movie ends? What do you think he should do with it?