Film No. 24 (2023) March 31st. 11:15 AM BACKLOT Cinema, West Perth W.A.
"Rubbish! Even old people don't like old people." (The sarcastic comment from the cynical son-in-law of a newly admitted patient).
NOMINEE : Best Actor (Bill Nighy), Best Adapted Screenplay (Kazuo Ishiguro) Academy Awards USA.
What better way to make a strong comment about the dodgy U.K. health system than through cinema. For a film of this nature to have an effect, it needs to attract a crowd. So will ALLELUJAH fulfil that ambition?
Maybe, and I hope so, but ALLELUJAH is a strange film and not because of the important themes it raises. It's more to do with the way the strange twist in its story is handled. I've not seen the much adored play of the same name (2018), the inspiration for this film, written by Alan Bennett, so maybe I've missed something. The film simply anti-climactically ends, when I think the audience should have been given clues about where it was headed, well before the titles began to roll.
Anyway this is not to detract from an earnest (to begin with), solid film played out by a cast including Jennifer Saunders (Nurse Gilpin), Judi Dench (Mary Moss), David Bradley (Joe Colman) and Russel Tovey (Colin Colman) who help to depict the hurdles a small geriatric hospital needs to jump in order to provide good, competent care. The eyes of the NHC are firmly on The Beth (Bethlehem Hospital) as an effective option in providing competent care to the elderly. So when the story strand where government advisor on health matters, Colin, is the son of patient Joe Colman, and visits regularly while their strained relationship gradually repairs, we get a sense of why the film might fulfil us. WRONG!
The third stanza of ALLELUJAH takes us, suddenly, into MIDSOMMER MURDERS territory. What more can I say? Heidi Thomas (writer) of CALL THE MIDWIFE fame is credited with this adaptation. This is her first feature film credit. TV series writing, and feature film writing are very different beasts (I'm only saying). In the final 10 minutes, Nurse Gilpin takes us into new territory, but gives no indication of what the audience should be prepared for. I know, plenty of thrillers do that, but this is not a thriller. It's an amusing British social drama with serious themes, asking questions about a country's heartlessness in its decision making process on matters of health care. Not ... well, maybe I've said too much when I used the MIDSOMMER analogy. 7GUMS.
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