Canadian surgeon Dr Norman Bethune Donald Sutherland journeys 1,500 miles into China to reach Mao Zedong#39s eighth route Army in the Wu Tai mountains where he will build hospitals, provide care, and train medics Flashbacks narrate the earlier events of his life a bout with tuberculosis at the Trudeau sanatorium the selfadministration of an experimental pneumothorax the invention of operative instruments his fascination with Socialism a journey into medical Russia and the founding of a mobile plasmatransfusion unit in wartorn Spain Bethune twice married and twice divorced his wife Frances Dame Helen Mirren, who chooses abortion over childrearing in her unstable marriage By 1939, Bethune had been dismissed from his Montreal Hospital for taking unconventional risks, and from his volunteer position in Spain for his chronic problems of drinking and womanizing As his friend states quotChina was all that was leftquot Even there, Bethune confidently ignores the advice of Chinese officials until heavy casualties make him realize his mistake and lead him to a spectacular apology
