Who will survive? Who won’t? It’s an unbecoming undercurrent in an otherwise absorbing nonfiction narrative, and it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Yet the film frequently sentimentalizes their experiences, utilizing David Cieri’s treacly score to drive home the tragedies and occasional triumphs of each situation, while also flirting with a morbid sense of suspense in the way each story is teased out over the course of a given installment. It’s impossible not to be moved by the sight of 14-month-old Olivia Blair as she suffers through a leukemia that has spread to her brain and spinal column, or to be stirred by the plight of Lori Wilson, an oncologist who, in a sad irony, is diagnosed with different types of cancer in both breasts. Siddhartha Mukherjee's masterly 'biography of cancer' makes for a great story, as well as an important history of scientific.

To this end, the most affecting (and problematic) sections of The Emperor of All Maladies are the sequences set in the present as the film follows several cancer-afflicted patients through their day-to-day struggles and treatment regimens. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddartha Mukherjee review. The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane biography of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure. This is all engrossing in that typical Ken Burns style - a nicely rhythmic mix of talking heads and archival imagery, confident narration by the late Edward Herrmann (who died of brain cancer in 2014) and a nagging sense that director Barak Goodman and his crew are staying somewhat on the surface of things, making a by-nature unpalatable subject easier to digest than it should be. An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The emperor of maladies review