Brittannia Hospital

Such a strange experience to watch 1982's BRITANNIA HOSPITAL, the third in director Lindsay Anderson's trilogy that began in the late '60s with ....if and continued in 1973 with O LUCKY MAN! Strange as this indictment of life in the United Kingdom has everything in its proper place, yet is indescribably flat.  David Sherwin, who wrote the previous two films, has great ideas but apparently ran out of inspiration as to how to realize them.  The first hour especially plays like amateur theater, or rather a groups of talented actors doing their damndest with subpar material.   Surely Anderson and editor Michael Ellis must take some blame, and indeed many scenes also play as if the worst or second to worst takes were selected.

Brittania Hospital boasts over a thousand beds and as many staff members, though whether it was burnout or apathy that has led to widespread insubordination is left to our imaginations.  The film opens with an elderly hyopthermia patient lying ignored on a stretcher while ER attendants argue over whether their employee breakfasts include sausage.  Union mandates, arbitration.  The patient dies in the meantime.  This is indicative of this movie's approach to satire.  Unsubtle throughout. 

Mobilization has become alarming.  A mob has formed outside the hospital gates.  Some are employees, many are militant protesters, angry that private pay patients and assorted VIPs get better treatment.  Though on this fateful day, when no less than the Queen Mother (or ahem, HRH) is set to visit, even an African dictator only gets an orange, as everyone in the kitchen (and elsewhere) is arguing with administrators like Potter (Leonard Rossiter).  Meanwhile, Professor/mad doctor Millar (Graham Crowden) is performing bizarre experiments on patients and putting the finishing touches on something called the Genesis Project, to be unveiled during the dedication of the new medical wing.   

Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell), protagonist of Anderson's earlier films, returns, now an investigative reporter who seeks to expose the hospital's ills.  He has two colleagues in a media van outside, one of whom is played by Mark Hamill.  Travis is aided by Nurse Persil (Marsha Hunt), who grants him access to the room in which Millar stores various body parts for his experiments.  What happens after that is left for you to discover, and drives this mad movie into full throttle horror for at least a few minutes.  At least one scene will most certainly not be for the squeamish.

There are several other potentially interesting characters and situations, but BRITANNIA HOSPITAL never quite becomes the bitter classic it aspires to be.  The second half works better, and Anderson creates some highly cinematic moments here and there, but overall this is a failed fist shake at socialized medicine and Thatcher politics.  Yes, the hospital is a metaphor for England.  The barbs against capitalism are always in our faces and could've benefited from a less noisy approach.  At times, even bombastic.  But by that final speech - one that will be uncomfortably prescient for twenty-first viewers - the use of Shakespeare will not only be appropriate, but cautionary.