Inspired by Christiaan Barnard's successful surgery, Polish doctor Jan Moll attempts to repeat it in Poland, only for the patient to die on the operating table. The resulting outcry results in stigma against any further attempts at this therapy.
Years later, a young but already accomplished maverick of a surgeon — Zbigniew Religa — struggles with both stifling academic environment and troubles with traditional therapies. Inspired by recent developments he's been reading of in Western medical journals, he concludes some of his patients could be saved only if a heart transplant becomes more than a freakish medical curiosity. To accomplish that goal, he is willing to try anything: from starting his own clinic, through dealing with the Party, up to risking his own marriage.
Quoth a review in "The Guardian": "you wouldn’t think a film about cardiology in Poland would be such a kick".
Bogowie contains the examples of following tropes:
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Religa falls into it once or twice.
- The Alleged Car: Every single one! Hey, it's inherent in the setting.
- Awful Wedded Life: It's hard to be a wife to a man obsessed with the idea of pioneering heart transplantation. She outright says he's a lousy husband.
- Bad Boss: Religa! He has a tendency to "fire" underlings who disagree with him, only to revoke this decision five minutes later. He doesn't even have to be drunk for that.
- Billy Needs an Organ: The Movie. The latter part of the film involves a search for suitable donors, despite the opposition of both the donors' families (who can't believe somebody would just show up and try to cut their beloved son for spare parts) and the other doctors (who are highly squeamish about this new-fangled idea of "brain death"). Oh, and the patients themselves, as well.Patient: But the donor better not be a faggot or a Jew. Or a woman.
- Commie Land: The story is set in Poland in the Eighties, so we're shown the weird bureaucratic mess with totalitarian elements the late socialism was.
- Crooked Contractor: The renovation crew Religa employs to fix up his new clinic. See also Incompetence, Inc. below.
- Description Cut: At one point, Religa says he'll never go to the Party for funding. The next scene shows him in an office of regional Party bigwig, complete with a bronze bust of Lenin in the background.
- Determinator: Religa. Ironically, he succeeds only after he lets go of his compulsion to push through a successful heart transplant. Giving himself some time allows his team to work out the exact doses of anti-rejection drugs and actually keep the patient alive in the long term.
- '80s Hair: In the literal sense. The story being set in Poland (and not the USA as typical for this trope), "eighties hair" include hairstyles that wouldn't be out of place in the Sixties as well.
- Establishing Character Moment: The film opens with Religa breaking into the medicine closet in the middle of the night, because he knows the patient's health really can't be expected to conform to the hospital's standard daily schedule. Not long after we are served a scene of him continuing resuscitation way past the point it made sense, establishing him as a Determinator as well.
- Everybody Smokes: Beginning with, you guessed it, the doctors.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: A nurse jokingly asks a young patient sitting on a hospital bed whether they "walk out" or "roll out". She says to roll out, so the nurse rolls out the whole bed along with the girl on it. Not much later, we're explained the girl had a heart condition where even minor exercise could kill her.
- Incompetence, Inc.: The renovation crew, who spend more time boozing than working. Except this time, it's Truth in Television. In the end, Religa's crew does all the work on their own so it would ever get finished, while the supposed professionals sit aside and look on.
- Literal Metaphor: After the death of a patient, Religa boozes in a bar, blathering to the bartender about his heart problems. The bartender takes it as a metaphor, but the advice turns out to be quite good in the end.
- Metaphorically True: A friend informed Religa that he has just the right location for a new clinic. What he didn't say was the intended location is a complete ruin, so it was right give or take a complete makeover. Nevertheless, Religa decided he can take on it, and the rest is history.
- Mood Whiplash: More than once. For instance, as a patient's body rejects the implanted heart, the doctors decide to try a xenogenic transplant (a temporary transplant of a pig's heart). We're then served a series of antics involving the poor animal badly reacting to sedation.
- Noble Demon: At one point, Religa saves the life of a man who turns out to have been a son of a high-ranking secret police functionary. In return, the latter uses his clout to secure funding for Religa's clinic, when a need arises some time later.
- Plot-Triggering Death: A young patient dies on an operating table due to complications caused by an undiagnosed health problem alongside the diagnosed one. As Religa explains himself before the ethics committee, he realizes she could've been saved if she was just administered a heart transplant instead of the ill-fated procedure.
- Period Piece: Eighties in Poland. Boozing and chain-smoking, dress and haircut styles, conspicuously placed thugs in black cars (and the cars themselves for that matter), and the overall mood of Just Before the End of socialist rule. Unlike many examples, the politics don't really factor in the story — the surgeons work to save lives, and they just happen to do it in shittier-than-usual political conditions. Those are just a fact of life.
- Shame If Something Happened: Religa tries to pull a variety of this on a supervisor of a mining company that he approached in his search for funding. He does not threaten him in any way, he just off-handedly mentions how common the cardiovascular diseases are for a middle-aged, overweight man in a stressful day job.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Lampshaded in a surgery scene:Religa: Fuck!Nurse: Blackjack!Religa: What?Anaesthesiologist: It's your twenty-first "fuck" during this operation.
- Start My Own: Facing the opposition of medical community, Religa takes an offer to start his own clinic. Of course, see Metaphorically True.
- Title Drop: The title shows up when another character tells Religa he's trying too hard, as if to outcompete God. This seems to work, stopping him for long enough to iron out the problems in their surgeries.
