Allelujah

As is often the case - I simply dont understand the low-scores by Imdb contributors. A score starting with a 5 on here is completely unjustified.

This is - perhaps at first sight - a boring film full of old doddery figures. There are no car chases - no screeching of wheels - no guns in fact or any raised voices threatening anyone with anything. Perhaps whats whats "wrong" here.

Instead there are many threads of peoples varied lives all ending up (as most readers of this will - if they are lucky) in their twilight years under the care of The NHS - their for our first breath and our last.

There is a completely unexpected plot twist near the ending - makes one think "Is this based on a true story" and then you remember the genius of the Writer Alan Bennetts fiction over decades here in the UK.

Its brilliant. Have some curiosity and give it a go.

There are some plot twists you can see coming a mile off. There are many films where you know a twist is coming, even if you don't know what it'll be. Allelujah is a film where you don't realise there's going to be a twist t all, never mind one so vicious.

Set in a small, crumbling hospital earmarked for closure, and which mostly deals with geriatric patients, Allelujah starts out as a classic Little Guy vs Government Machine story. There's much that is poignant, and much that is comic and there are fine performances throughout, particularly from Jennifer Saunders, David Bradley and Derek Jacobi.

Then, just when the bureaucrat seems set for a big change of heart and the audience senses the feel-good ending, the rug's pulled out from under them completely. It's both devastating and unforgettable.

Dr Valentine's final piece to camera is magnificent, as he says the things that *need* to be said.

This is a bleak drama, intermittently comic, set in the geriatric ward of an old hospital in Yorkshire which looks and feels like the one where I had my appendix removed in the 1950s.

Jennifer Saunders is the ward sister, efficiently and briskly coping with everything from assisted showers to incontinence and patient deaths. Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi are among the patients, but the focus is mostly on Joe (David Bradley), a frail old gent hoping to be sent home, and his nerdy son Colin (Russell Tovey, the go-to actor for gay roles), who is on the team planning a new hospital.

The Alan Bennett pedigree guarantees brilliant writing and all the cast do eminent justice to the script, but the tone of the movie is unremittingly glum, largely focused on death and dementia, and the dimly lit hospital adds more gloom. The ending is a bit rushed and not entirely in tune with what's gone before.

This is a dark comedy that is perhaps a bit too dark. Our Mr. Bennett has not lost his touch, but the humor in ALLELUJAH is over-laced with bile and bitterness.

On the positive side, the acting was great. I particularly liked Jennifer Saunders' portrayal of a dedicated, no-nonsense ward sister, and David Bradley's retired miner. The underlying message of the threat to the NHS by those that don't understand its core values is an important one. But this film was not the way to make that point.

Although, as you'd expect with a strong cast, the acting was great, many of the characters were tediously stereotyped: the charming Asian doctor who 'loved old people', the bubbly, enthusiastic nurse, a range of old people who used Alan Bennett one-liners to establish themselves as sweetly eccentric, away with the fairies, or curmudgeonly in a loveable way. You could tell just by the body language that the children of an old lady were up to no good and just wanted to fleece her. The son of the miner who had gone South to forge a successful career as a management consultant was predictably transformed from an over-confident critic of the hospital to a supporter.

The setting was not so much stereotyped as confusing. The threatened hospital did have one doctor, one nurse, a sister, and a physiotherapist, and some of the patients were sick - indeed the plot hinged on a character who was worried that if he improved he'd be sent back to a nursing home. But most of the activities that we saw suggested that the institution was a care home - the old people seemed to be long-term residents and were well enough to shuffle around doing craft activities and reminiscence therapy. A film crew from the local paper were drifting around interviewing residents. It was as if the original intention was to make a film about a care home, but they then realised that if they wanted the message to be about the NHS, they needed to make it into a hospital.

I won't include spoilers but just to say that just when you think this is going to be a totally saccharine experience, where the struggling hospital will be saved from closure, there is a plot twist that acts like a hand grenade in derailing all expectations. It might have worked if the rest of the film had been more believable, but it seemed totally unsatisfactory in the context of the rest of the film.

And then, at the end we have bolted on a section where the nice doctor is now in a covid ward, making a heartfelt plea for the continuation of the NHS, while showing devastating scenes of patients in corridors, and exhausted staff in PPE struggling to cope. I found myself wishing that Ken Loach had made a film on this theme: that would have been far more effective than this clunky treatment.

I thought I was all set for a heart warming feel good film. Very depressing. Tackles the issues of geriatric care and there's no happy ending we all are going to die. Jennifer Saunders is really different to how we usually see her. No make up dowdy and with a northern accent. It didn't surprise me she could transform successfully into a no nonsense matron of a Yorkshire hospital given all of the characters she played in French and Saunders. Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi of course steal the show. The words spoken as a narrative over the film by Dr Valentine had me sobbing into a tissue throughout .