Fever, The

Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave (Atonement, Julia) stars in this HBO Films adaptation of writer/actor Wallace Shawn's deeply personal play about the high cost of enlightenment, and the ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not. Redgrave plays a nameless woman from a privileged world, suffering from a sense of disconnection from her comfortable life, who travels to a country (also nameless) in the throes of civil war. Suddenly deliriously ill, she confronts an internal chorus of conflicting voices: dreams of comfort from her past, images of violence, accusations of indifference, and cold-blooded arguments in favor of oppression. The central question: what, if anything, is a morally consistent way to live in the world as it is?

• drama