Britannia Hospital

Directed by LINDSAY ANDERSON

Starring MALCOLM MCDOWELL GRAHAM CROWDEN LEONARD ROSSITER

1982

Out NOW

Blu-ray

Rabble-rousing British filmmaker Lindsay Anderson’s 1982 opus stands as the mangled capstone of what and 1972’s . is often held up in conservative film guides as a byword for artistic failure, an ugly-beautiful monstrosity that sits somewhere between glorious folly and unbridled trainwreck. It captures a day at the eponymous Edwardian-era hospital as its staff manically prepare for a visit from the Queen Mother to inaugurate the opening of the state-of-the-art Millar Scientific Research Institute. Its ice-white facade and futuristic tech capabilities sit awkwardly next to the private wing which boasts silver service meals and walls strewn with oil paintings, which in turn connects to the public wing, in which patients are left on gurneys while grubby orderlies claim to be on a break. All the while, flying pickets gather outside, and a protest gradually expands because the hospital is harbouring an African despot. With its giant ensemble cast of British character actors and multiple entangled plot strands, it’s a film that falls short of its wild ambitions. And yet, there’s something completely beguiling about its determination to see how deep it can plunge the satirical knife into everyone and everything, and it now might be considered as one of the key screen texts on Thatcherism and its discontents. McDowell’s Travis character is less central to the plot than in Anderson’s previous features, as the focus is now on Graham Crowden’s Professor Millar, who murders patients for body parts, drinks brain smoothies and has devised a contraption that he believes will outflank the decaying shell that is the human body. It’s like Godard directing a movie, but in a good way.