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Allelujah

  • 2022
  • 1h 39m
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
2K
YOUR RATING
Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, David Bradley, Jennifer Saunders, Russell Tovey, Jesse Akele, and Bally Gill in Allelujah (2022)
The story of a geriatric ward in a small Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure.
Play trailer2:18
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Drama

The story of a geriatric ward in a small Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure.The story of a geriatric ward in a small Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure.The story of a geriatric ward in a small Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure.

  • Director
    • Richard Eyre
  • Writers
    • Alan Bennett
    • Heidi Thomas
  • Stars
    • Jesse Akele
    • Lorraine Ashbourne
    • Nivedita Bhargava
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.0/10
    2K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Richard Eyre
    • Writers
      • Alan Bennett
      • Heidi Thomas
    • Stars
      • Jesse Akele
      • Lorraine Ashbourne
      • Nivedita Bhargava
    • 61User reviews
    • 29Critic reviews
    • 52Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:18
    Official Trailer

    Photos21

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    Top cast41

    Edit
    Jesse Akele
    • Nurse Pinkney
    Lorraine Ashbourne
    Lorraine Ashbourne
    • Mrs Earnshaw
    Nivedita Bhargava
    • Mother
    David Bradley
    David Bradley
    • Joe Colman
    Nicholas Burns
    Nicholas Burns
    • Minister
    Paul Butterworth
    Paul Butterworth
    • Richard
    JP Conway
    JP Conway
    • Kieran
    Eileen Davies
    Eileen Davies
    • Molly
    Judi Dench
    Judi Dench
    • Mary
    Nishu Dikshit
    • Ruha
    Patricia England
    • Mavis
    Vincent Franklin
    Vincent Franklin
    • Mr Salter
    Bally Gill
    Bally Gill
    • Dr Valentine
    Gerard Horan
    Gerard Horan
    • Mr Earnshaw
    Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    • Ambrose
    Catherine Jayes
    • Pianist
    Rajinder Kaur
    • Nani
    Harsheen Kaur
    • Shirina
    • Director
      • Richard Eyre
    • Writers
      • Alan Bennett
      • Heidi Thomas
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews61

    6.02K
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    Featured reviews

    9Lomax343

    Touching, Affecting and Twisty

    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.
    7gazmar62

    Dying to help the NHS ?

    Maybe TIFF wasn't the best place to launch this very British film based on a play ?

    The NHS ( National Health Service) is shown in a microcosm of political and cynical struggles in a small community hospital unit for old people needing special care.

    It's very Alan Bennett, although with short but still cutting monologues , some are funnier than others but all serve a purpose.

    The geriatric ward is the logical place to highlight the old and decrepit hospital system, fighting for survival at death's door, but there are more metaphors here, the NHS is killing people due to a lack of resources, most notably a shortage of beds, is there even a shortage of carers?.

    Jennifer Saunders is great as the head nurse trying her best to keep a 'clean' ward, but working to targets for turnover of patients and moving them through the system comes at a heavy price, closure is imminent and her efficiency is not enough.

    The doctor is stereotypical, an Asian immigrant with a nostalgic true vocational outlook to care for his patients with a hands on approach.

    The patients are a who's who of British stalwart actors and they are very convincing as geriatrics, each representing the problems within the health care system. One patient's son happens to be a management consultant for the government's health minister and getting a personal experience of the hospital suggests the need for 'government' to understand the real world of this care in the community, rather than just facts and figures on spreadsheets, it's a political statement about how things are failing people by going for large scale centres of excellence?.

    As a person with a lot of personal experience of the NHS and getting old too, I can relate to the representation if not actually recognise the geriatric care unit.

    The film takes a risky turn or two near the end especially with a plea for support and understanding of the caring people who work in the NHS providing a public service, which is now underappreciated again post pandemic, although ironically with the recent strike action this has probably not helped their case.

    This is bound to be a divisive film and some may be disappointed by it's change in tone from comedy to politics, especially if they don't understand the British system or the metaphors about it.
    7davidgee

    A comedy about death and dementia?

    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.
    10stephanieruthwilson

    A beautiful film that frightened me to death.

    Being UK based and over 60 years old I found this film a little to close to home and therefore so very powerful. It was funny, beautiful and so very sad. It was Alan Bennett all over. Everything was very small and beautifully presented. There was not an ounce of energy wasted, it was all perfectly placed. All the main characters had a tiny vignette which gave them enough of a back story to make them real people. The doctor was from a society that holds dear it's elderly and silently struggles to understand why his patients aren't held in the same high esteem. The film ends with the Doctors monolog praising the people of the NHS and so it should. A political piece, probably but more a piece about our attitudes to the elderly.
    5dorothybishop-12911

    Excellent acting but flaky plot

    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.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The point about the Earnshaws needing their mother to hang on for another three months relates to UK Inheritance Tax. No tax is payable on any gift given more than seven years before the giver dies. If however, the giver dies within seven years, tax can be applied retrospectively. There is a sliding scale, known as taper relief, so that if the giver dies six years after the gift (as here), the tax rate is 8% (from a maximum of 40%).

      In the case of large transfers (eg a property), even after various allowances are taken into account, 8% can amount to a significant sum.
    • Goofs
      After a death, a pulse is checked using a thumb. You should never take a pulse using your thumb as it has its own pulse.
    • Quotes

      Sister Gilpin: I mean, all these managers, all they think about is movement isn't it? Like the hospital system is just some giant bowel that has to keep pumping out shit.

    • Connections
      Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Dame Judi Dench/Hugh Jackman/Michael B. Jordan/Eugene Levy/Paul Rudd/Michael Douglas/Pink (2023)
    • Soundtracks
      For the Good Times
      Written by Kris Kristofferson

      Performed by Perry Como

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    FAQ14

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 17, 2023 (United Kingdom)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Aleluia
    • Filming locations
      • Wakefield Westgate Railway Station, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK(Train station)
    • Production companies
      • Warner Bros.
      • Pathe UK
      • BBC Film
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross worldwide
      • $5,631,642
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 39 minutes
    • Color
      • Color

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