Wonderful Movie

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Not for the first time and almost certainly not the last I find that I have apparently been watching a different film to the majority of people who have posted comments here, all seemingly fully paid-up members of the Lindsay Anderson For President club. It's strange - to me at least - how the BFI seemingly is unable to function without a deity to worship and with Ken Loach on his last legs they'll be burning the midnight oil on Southbank and laying in a supply of white smoke. Anderson of course preceded Loach and that poseur who came up with a trilogy about Liverpool and then had the temerity to think he was up to rewriting Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea. So be it. This effort can't seem to decide if it's a poor man's I'm All Right, Jack or an up-market Hammer horror either way it's well worth missing.

Anderson attempts a rather heavy handed allegorical tale, his vision of a dysfunctional Albion. The working class flexing its muscle through organised labour, a pragmatic middle class, kow-towing to labour and the aristocracy, a ruling class oblivious to the chaos surrounding it, and a prying, amoral media. Anderson seems to have gone beyond his critique of capitalist imperialism and found himself buffeted from all sides by the chaos that was Britain in the early 1980s. His major coup is seeing the future of humankind as merely a pawn in the oncoming information industry. The film was made towards the end of the first Thatcher government's electoral victory, when Britain was still in the grip of industrial conflict, and the there was still a debate about the possibilities of socialism. Nowadays this seems very dated and almost obscene, and its hard to imagine that the ongoing conflict betweenmanagement and labour was very real back then. However, because of Andersons obsession with class conflict, the story gets completely lost, and I found it hard to maintain interest in a story that had very little to empathise with. UK Films such as Gregory's Girl, Chariots of Fire and Ghandi were the big hitters, British directors like Ridley Scott were making Blade Runner. Anderson, like many others, was on the wrong side of the fence culturally and politically by the 1980s. People wanted something more than sledgehammer politics. However, this is a loveletter to some of the great TV actors of the 1970s and 1980s. Leonard Rossitor is great, Robin Asquith more than holds his own. There's Joan Plowwright, Dandy Nichols, and Richard Griffiths. Alan Bates makes an appearance as does Arthur Lowe. Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell. The list is endless. So, a poor movie, but worth a watch just to catch the best of British acting from the era.

It can be anybody's wild guess that most viewers would bring to their minds a sick nation which needs to be urgently cured come what may whenever they hear about a film with a wacky title-"Britannia Hospital". However, one has to bear in mind that "Britannia Hospital" is no ordinary infirmary as it is infested with numerous dubious characters intent on getting their personal agendas furthered at a time when the eponymous health establishment is getting all spruced up to celebrate its 500th anniversary. One can thus watch with customary mirth a scientist determined to produce the best brain in the world, an hospital official who would like to instruct its staff about the right manners in which British queen must be received, a reckless reporter who would like to stealthily film irregularities of an hospital etc. A long time before Romanian director Cristi Puiu burst on international scene with his absurd tale set in a Bucharest hospital, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), Lindsay Anderson-one of British cinema's greatest auteur had already made one of the best satires in the history of British cinema. Britannia Hospital is so brutal yet frank in its mission to expose horrendous absurdities of an hospital system that comparisons with Samuel Fuller's maverick "Shock Corridor" (1963) would not appear incongruous. Lindsay Anderson's film is a phenomenal treat for all Anglophobes/Britanophobes as he ruthlessly attacks whatever that is either dear to Britain or has a distinct British connection. Upon its release in 1982, a horrible time for Britain, this Lindsay Anderson film was butchered beyond recognition by some vested interests of British press. However, it is high time genuine film admirers make efforts to go beyond the realm of "Carry On" films as "Britannia Hospital" is the only perfect film which would make viewers jump with joy discovering why affordable,decent health care is still a matter of concern for most ordinary Britons.

After satirising Britain's education system in 'If....' and the British justice system in 'O Lucky Man!', Lindsay Anderson takes a look at the health care system in this final part of his trilogy with Malcolm McDowell. It is not as effectively dramatic as 'If....', nor is it as delightfully whimsical as 'O Lucky Man!', but even if slightly inferior, this is a good film in itself, full of fascinating ideas and colourful characters. It is quite interesting to watch throughout, although a bit excessively disgusting and over-the-top at times, and in general it is a fairly solid conclusion to perhaps the oddest trilogy that has ever been filmed.