Something the Lord Made

In 1930s Nashville, Vivien Thomas loses the money he has saved when the bank fails and takes a job as a laboratory janitor at a university. The surgeon Alfred Blalock quickly recognises his hands and his mind. They work together for years. In the end they develop an operation until then considered impossible, the correction of the heart defect known as blue baby syndrome. The subject is not medicine but the person doing the work not entering the record. Thomas developed the procedure, but he is Black and has no degree. He is employed on the janitorial payroll, enters the operating theatre only to watch over Blalock's shoulder, and does not appear in the photograph of the first operation. The form is that of a television film: chronological narration, explanatory scenes and a measured camera. There is no formal ambition; the strength is in the relationship between the two performers. The story is real: the method Blalock and Thomas developed saved thousands of children. Thomas received an honorary doctorate only in 1976, when his portrait was hung in the hospital. It was made for HBO and won the Emmy for a television film. Alan Rickman plays Blalock and Yasiin Bey plays Thomas. Who it is for: viewers who like medical drama from real events and watching performances. Who it is not for: anyone after formal ambition; the film tells it straight and stays inside the television template.