A profoundly disturbing character study more than anything, this film, masterfully written by Paddy Chayefsky, manages to convey such bitterness and disgust in it's point of view, it can not even be topped by the also Chayefsky stamped 'Network'. Thinly disguised as a black comedy, this is the tale of Herbert Bock, whose family problems and working issues - the huge Manhattan hospital in which he works in is as civilized as a concentration camp - lead him to contemplate suicide. Then, beautiful Diana Rigg - thee who knows Dame Diana solely as a Bond Girl, does not know her AT ALL - steps into the dreary settings, - Barbara, the character she perfectly portrays, is there to take her mentally ill father, which just happens to be a serial, gospel-bound, murderer, out of the madness of the hospital - , and into George C. Scott's seemingly frozen heart... Events do not lead to a happy ending. Events do not lead to an ending at all... however, it exposes the never ending cycle life is reduced to. Joy, bliss... several feelings revolving one's own being, no matter what surrounds him... and all these several feelings leading you right back where you've started. It's like Chayefsky was trying to say how meaningless and plodding existing is... If you can't understand anything I just said, you will, as soon as you hear the last line... "It's like p***ing in the wind... right, Herb?"...
Review of The Hospital
